"If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it's my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth."
"You have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have."
"Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate."
"A box without hinges, key, or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid."
"'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'"
"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
"The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out."
"Not all those who wander are lost."
"Courage is found in unlikely places."
"A friend of mine tells that I talk in shorthand and then smudge it."
"Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger."
"Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes."
"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him."
"It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish."
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens."
"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."
"I never liked Hans Christian Andersen because I knew he was always getting at me."
"I don't like allegories."
"A pen is to me as a beak is to a hen."
"Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today; for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favourite haunt."
"It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves. Of old they spoke the languages of Men, after their own fashion, and liked and disliked much the same things as Men did. But what exactly our relationship is can no longer be discovered."
"Don't go getting mixed up in the business of your betters, or you'll land in trouble too big for you."
"Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write."
