J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
20 quotes
"Don't trust your head, Samwise, it is not the best part of you."
"A hunted man sometimes wearies of distrust and longs for friendship."
"...as young and as ancient as Spring...."
"He has led us in here against our fears, but he will lead us out again, at whatever cost to himself."
"I want to be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren."
"Haldir had gone on and was now climbing to the high flet. As Frodo prepared to follow him, he laid his hand upon the tree beside the ladder: never before had he been so suddenly and so keenly aware of the feel and texture of a tree's skin and of the life within it. He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself."
"You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess: not for power or wisdom, at any rate. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have."
"Sam was the only member of the party who had not been over the river before. He had a strange feeling as the slow gurgling stream slipped by: his old life lay behind in the mists, dark adventure lay in front."
"Hobbits!’ he thought. ‘Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree. Three of them! There’s something mighty queer behind this.’ He was quite right, but he never found out any more about it."
"Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars."
"Memory is not what the heart desires. That is only a mirror...."
"I seem to see ahead, in a kind of way. I know we are going to take a very long road, into darkness; but I know I can't turn back."
"Some who have read the book, or at any rate reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no reason to complain, since I have similar opinions of their work, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer."
"...and all the stars flowered in the sky."
"Then shouldering their burdens, they set off, seeking a path that would bring them over the grey hills of the Emyn Muil, and down into the Land of Shadow."
"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do no be too eager to deal out death in judgment."
"Clothes are but little loss, if you escape from drowning."
"Travellers scowl at us, and countrymen give us scornful names. 'Strider' I am to one fat man who lives within a day's march of foes that would freeze his heart, or lay his little town in ruin, if he were not guarded ceaselessly. Yet we would not have it otherwise. If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be, and we must be secret to keep them so."
"I could not 'make' you--except by force, which would break your mind."
"He loved mountains, or he had loved the thought of them marching on the edge of stories brought from far away; but now he was borne down by the insupportable weight of Middle-earth. He longed to shut out the immensity in a quiet room by a fire."