I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was...
Still round the corner there may wait A new road or a secret gateAnd though I oft have passed them by A day will come at last when IShall take the hidden paths that run West of the Moon, East of the S...
We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by my...
You cannot pass!
Yes, I am here. And you are lucky to be here too after all the absurd things you've done since you left home.
Where there's life there's hope.
Well, I am going back into the open air, to see what the wind and sky are doing!
Well I've made up my mind, anyway. I want to see mountains again, Gandalf – mountains; and then find somewhere where I can rest. In peace and quiet, without a lot of relatives prying around, and strin...
War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I...
To think I should have lived to be goodmorninged by Belladonna Took's son, as if I was selling buttons at the door!
They hammered on the outer gate and called, but there was at first no answer; and then to their surprise someone blew a horn, and the lights in the windows went out. A voice shouted in the dark: 'Who'...
The morning came, pale and clammy. Frodo woke up first, and found that a tree-root had made a hole in his back, and that his neck was stiff. Walking for pleasure! Why didn't I drive? he thought, as he...
Somehow the killing of the giant spider, all alone by himself in the dark without the help of the wizard or the dwarves or of anyone else, made a great difference to Mr. Baggins. He felt a different p...
Now of old the name of that forest was Greenwood the Great, and its wide halls and aisles were the haunt of many beasts and of birds of bright song; and there was the realm of King Thranduil under the...
No one, I fancy, would discredit a story that the Archbishop of Canterbury slipped on a banana skin merely because he found that a similar comic mishap had been reported of many people, and especially...
May the hair on your toes never fall out!
Journey’s endIn western lands beneath the SunThe flowers may rise in Spring,The trees may bud, the waters run,The merry finches sing.Or there maybe 'tis cloudless night,And swaying branches bearThe El...
It is usually assumed that children are the natural or the specially appropriate audience for fairy-stories. In describing a fairy-story which they think adults might possibly read for their own enter...
In this Music [the singing of the angels in harmony] the World was begun; for Iluvatar made visible the song of the Ainur,and they beheld it as a light in the darkness.
His head was swimming, and he was far from certain even of the direction they had been going in when he had his fall. He guessed as well as he could, and crawled along for a good way, till suddenly hi...