Top 100 Tolkien's Quotes
#1. I would love to live in 'The Lord of the Rings.' J. R. R. Tolkien's world is so vivid and rich and sensual. I love the country setting and the routine of the hobbits. Of course, I would like to be a hobbit who goes on small adventures - not huge, horrifying ones like Frodo's quest.
Mary Pope Osborne
#2. Beginning with Bilbo's unexpected party in chapter 1 with its tea, seed-cakes, buttered scones, apple-tarts, mince-pies, cheese, eggs, cold chicken, pickles, beer, coffee, and smoke rings, we find that a reverence, celebration, and love of the everyday is an essential part of Tolkien's moral vision
Devin Brown
#3. Tolkien's words and sentences seemed like natural things, like rock formations or waterfalls, and wanting to write like Tolkien would have been, for me, like wanting to blossom like a cherry tree or climb a tree like a squirrel or rain like a thunderstorm. - Gaiman on J. R. R. Tolkien
Neil Gaiman
#5. Peter Jackson has just really earned the right to be Tolkien's torchbearer on screen.
Evangeline Lilly
#6. Did you know, ji,' Zulu offered, 'that the map of Tolkien's Middle earth fits quite well over central England and Wales? Maybe all fairylands are right here, in our midst.
Salman Rushdie
#7. I fell even more deeply in love with Tolkien's legendarium after studying Old English literature at uni, as I got a sense of the historical events and cultures that Tolkien used to create his world. My favourite of his imaginary locations is Lothlorien.
Samantha Shannon
#8. I think the tendency to over-explain and over describe is one of the most common failings in fantasy. It's an unfortunate piece of Tolkien's legacy. Don't get me wrong, Tolkien was a great worldbuilder, but he got a little caught up describing his world at times, at the expense of the overall story.
Patrick Rothfuss
#9. I have been illustrating Tolkien's books ever since I first read them, long before illustration became my profession.
John Howe
#10. Fantasy has had some problems with being too repetitive, in my opinion. I try to read what other people are doing - and say, 'How can I add to this rather than just recycle it? How can I stand on Tolkien's shoulders rather than stand tied to his kneecaps?'
Brandon Sanderson
#11. Tolkien had sent him a poem called "Kortirion Among the Trees". Kortirion represented Warwick in the early stages of Tolkien's mythology, and was the chief town, complete with tower, in a region of elms (Warwickshire) on the Lonely Island (England).
Colin Duriez
#12. Most modern fantasy just rearranges the furniture in Tolkien's attic.
Terry Pratchett
#13. while Tolkien's stories were not historically real, they were true
Devin Brown
#14. Side? I am on nobody's side, because nobody is on my side, little orc.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#15. The thing about Tolkien, about The Lord of the Rings, is that it's perfect. It's this whole world, this whole process of immersion, this journey. It's not, I'm pretty sure, actually true, but that makes it more amazing, that someone could make it all up. Reading it changes everything.
Jo Walton
#16. He caught hold of Tom's leg - as well as he could, it was thick as a young tree-trunk - but he was sent spinning up into the top of some bushes, when Tom kicked the sparks up in Thorin's face.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#17. The sky was clear and the stars were growing bright. 'It's going to be a fine night,' he said aloud. 'That's good for a beginning. I feel like walking.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#18. Like his fellow genius, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis has redefined the nature of fantasy, adding richness beauty, and dimension ... In our times, every fantasy realm must be measured in comparison with Narnia.
Lloyd Alexander
#19. Quite a merry gathering! ... What's that? Tea! No thank you! A little red wine, I think for me.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#20. Seek for the Sword that was broken In Imladris it dwells; There shall be counsels taken Stronger than Morgul-spells. There shall be shown a token That Doom is near at hand, For Isuldur's Bane shall waken, And the halfling forth shall stand.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#21. I know that part of the reason I read Tolkien when I'm ill is that there is an almost total absence of sexuality in his world, which is restful.
A.S. Byatt
#22. Sam, clinging to Frodo's arm, collapsed on a step in the black darkness. 'Poor old Bill!' he said in a choking voice. 'Poor old Bill! Wolves and snakes! But the snakes were too much for him. I had to choose, Mr. Frodo. I had to come with you.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#23. Forth, and fear no darkness! Arise! Arise, Riders of Theoden! Spears shall be shaken,swords shall be splintered! A sword day ... a red day ... ere the sun rises! Ride now! ... Ride now! ... Ride! Ride to ruin and the world's ending! Death! "Death!" Death! "Death!" DEATH! "Death!" Forth, Eorlingas!!
J.R.R. Tolkien
#24. Float beyond the world of trees. Out into the whispering breeze, past the rushes, past the weeds, past the marsh's waving reeds.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#25. Frodo! Mr. Frodo, my dear!' cried Sam, tears almost blinding him. 'It's Sam, I've come!' He half lifted his master and hugged him to his breast.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#26. Some things are ill to hear when the world's in shadows.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#27. Put on a few eggs, there's a good fellow!" Gandalf called after him, as the hobbit stumped off to the pantries. "And just bring out the cold chicken and
J.R.R. Tolkien
#28. I don't see why the likes o' thee
Without axin' leave should go makin' free
With the shank or the shin o' my father's kin;
So hand the old bone over!
Rover! Trover!
Though dead he be, it belongs to he;
So hand the old bnone over!
J.R.R. Tolkien
#29. Tom's country ends here: he will not pass the borders. Tom has his house to mind, and Goldberry is waiting!
J.R.R. Tolkien
#31. We were talking of DRAGONS, Tolkien and I
In a Berkshire bar. The big workman
Who had sat silent and sucked his pipe
All the evening, from his empty mug
With gleaming eye glanced towards us:
"I seen 'em myself!" he said fiercely.
C.S. Lewis
#32. And there's no sex, hardly any love stuff at all, in Middle Earth, which always made me think, yes, the world would be better off without it.
Jo Walton
#33. Gandalf put his hand on Pippin's head. "There never was much hope," he answered. "Just a fool's hope, as I have been told.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#34. Tolkien made dwarf sign language because, you know, it's too loud to talk in the mines.
Richard C. Armitage
#35. A new hour comes. Isildur's Bane is found. Battle is at hand. The Sword shall be reforged. I will come to Minas Tirith.' 'Isildur's
J.R.R. Tolkien
#36. All fairy tales, Tolkien argued, echo the gospel of Jesus Christ in some way because the gospel is the True Story; it's the real fairy tale that crashed into the time line of history... 'The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact,' Lewis wrote
Sarah Arthur
#37. So fair, so cold; like a morning of pale spring still clinging to winter's chill.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#38. Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing into the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!
J.R.R. Tolkien
#39. Mere flight in a dream you say. In dream many desires are revealed; and desire may be the last flicker of Estel.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#40. A tree there towere Tall and branching That house upholding The hall's wonder Its leaves their hangings Its limbs rafters Its mighty bole In the midst standing.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#41. The Nazgul they were; the Ringwraiths, the Enemy's most terribly servants; darkness went with them and they cried with the voices of death.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#42. But it may be the hard part of a friend to rebuke a friend's folly.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#43. How shall a man judge what to do in such times?'
'As he ever has judged,' said Aragorn. 'Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear ... It is a man's part to discern them, as much in th Golden Wood as in his own house.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#44. The world is not in your books and maps, it's out there.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#45. Most fantasy is incredibly derivative of Tolkien, so when you read a lot of fantasy, it's really just elves and gnomes, and it all goes back to Tolkien.
John Orloff
#46. Snow's all right on a fine morning, but I like to be in bed when it's falling
J.R.R. Tolkien
#47. It's got to ask uss a question, my preciouss, yes, yess, yesss. Jusst one more question to guess, yes, yess," said Gollum.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#48. I did nothing but run away from the time I was a puppy, and I kept on running and roving until one fine morning - a very fine morning, with the sun in my eyes - I fell over the world's edge chasing a butterfly.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#49. Farewell! wherever you fare, till your eyries receive you at the journey's end!
J.R.R. Tolkien
#50. Don't leave me here alone! It's your Sam calling. Don't go where I can't follow! Wake up, Mr. Frodo!
J.R.R. Tolkien
#51. If that's being queer, then we could do with a bit more queerness in these parts.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#52. Few other griefs amid the ill chances of this world have more bitterness and shame for a man's heart than to behold the love of a lady so fair and brave that cannot be returned.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#53. Already the hour had struck, and at his great Master's bidding he must march with war into the West.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#54. There's earth under his old feet, and clay on his fingers; wisdom in his bones, and both his eyes are open,' said Tom. It
J.R.R. Tolkien
#55. For some time I lived in fear of receiving a letter signed 'S. Gollum'. That would have been more difficult to deal with.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#56. A good vocabulary is not acquired by reading books written according to some notion of the vocabulary of one's age group. It comes from reading books above one.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#57. I wonder if people will ever say, "Let's hear about Frodo and the Ring." And they'll say, "Yes, that's one of my favorite stories. Frodo was really courageous, wasn't he, Dad?" "Yes, m'boy, the most famousest of hobbits. And that's saying a lot.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#58. 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.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#59. Tolkien was, I believe, writing about his experience in the First and Second World Wars, where he would have spent a lot of time without any female contact. He was part of the fellowship of men who went to war, and I think, really, that's what he's writing about.
Richard C. Armitage
#60. Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks, and the setting sun with the last light of Durin's Day will shine upon the key-hole.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#61. I wonder,' said Frodo. 'It's my doom, I think, to go to that Shadow yonder, so that a way will be found. But will good or evil show it to me?
J.R.R. Tolkien
#62. It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#63. Friendship with the latter marked the breakdown of two old prejudices. At my first coming into the world I had been (implicitly) warned never to trust a Papist, and at my first coming into the English Faculty (explicitly) never to trust a philologist. Tolkien was both.
C.S. Lewis
#64. But perhaps you could call her perilous because she's so strong in herself. You , you could dash yourself to pieces on her, like a ship on a rock, or drown yourself, like a Hobbit in a river, but neither rock nor river would be to blame.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#65. The first of Sam and Rosie's children was born on the twenty-fifth of March, a date that Sam noted.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#67. Great Elephants!" said Gandalf, "you are not at all yourself this morning - you have never dusted the mantelpiece!" "What's that got to do with it?
J.R.R. Tolkien
#68. Tolkien helped Lewis to realise that the problem lay not in Lewis's rational failure to understand the theory, but in his imaginative failure to grasp its significance. The issue was not primarily about truth, but about meaning. When
Alister E. McGrath
#69. Frodo gave a cry, and there he was, fallen upon his knees at the chasm's edge. But Gollum, dancing like a mad thing, held aloft the ring, a finger still thrust within its circle.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#70. There aren't many funny bits in Mr Tolkien either,' Matilda said.
'Do you think that all children's books ought to have funny bits in them?' Miss Honey asked.
'I do,' Matilda said. 'Children are not so serious as grown-ups and love to laugh.
Roald Dahl
#71. But Tolkien doesn't ask the question: What was Aragorn's tax policy?
George R R Martin
#72. The air was warm. The sound of the running and falling water was loud, and the evning was filled with a faint scent of trees and floewrs, as f summer still lingered in Elrond's gardens.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#73. When you succeed at creating your own world, whether it's in any realm - like Tolkien was able to do - and people are able to enter that world, it's a special thing.
David Selby
#74. Elrond's house was perfect, whether you liked food or sleep or story-telling or singing (or reading), or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all. Merely to be there was a cure for weariness ... Evil things did not come into the secret valley of Rivendell.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#75. The whole thing is quite hopeless, so it's no good worrying about tomorrow. It probably won't come.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#76. Now we see you, you nasty little creature! We will eat you and leave your bones and skin hanging on a tree. Ugh! he's got a sting has he? Well, we'll get him all the same, and then we'll hang him head downwards for a day or two." While
J.R.R. Tolkien
#77. What have I got in my pocket?" he said aloud. He was talking to himself, but Gollum thought it was a riddle, and he was frightfully upset.
"Not fair! not fair!" he hissed. "It isn't fair, my precious, is it, to ask us what it's got in it's nassty little pocketsess?
J.R.R. Tolkien
#78. To think I should have lived to be goodmorninged by Belladonna Took's son, as if I was selling buttons at the door!
J.R.R. Tolkien
#79. Where there's life there's hope, and need of vittles.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#80. Actually in Hobbiton and Bywater every day in the year was somebody's birthday, so that every hobbit in those parts had a fair chance of at least one present at least once a week. But they never got tired of them.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#81. Few can see wither their road will lead them, till they comes to it's end. - Gimli
J.R.R. Tolkien
#82. It's crazy to me how concerned people get with what it looks like and what you can do there. People may as well be talking about JRR Tolkien or Star Trek or something.
Brad Warner
#84. While there's life there's hope!' as my father used to say, and 'Third time pays for all.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#85. There is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#86. Who are you, Master?' he asked.
'Eh, what?' said Tom sitting up, and his eyes glinting in the gloom. 'Don't you know my name yet? That's the only answer. Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless?
J.R.R. Tolkien
#87. Of the twelve companions of Thorin, ten remained. Fili and Kili had fallen defending him with shield and body, for he was their mother's elder brother.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#88. J.R.R. Tolkien told a questioning correspondent, life's purpose is to know, praise, and thank God.
Philip Zaleski
#89. Then hope unlooked-for came so suddenly to Eomer's heart, and with it the bite of care and fear renewed, that he said no more, but turned and went swiftly from the hall.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#90. The Lord of the Rings' is fundamentally an infantile work. Tolkien is not interested in the way grownup, adult human beings interact with each other. He's interested in maps and plans and languages and codes.
Philip Pullman
#91. Smeagol won't grub for roots and carrotses and - taters. What's taters,precious, eh, what's taters?"
"Po-ta-toes!" said Sam.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#92. That's what I meant,' said Pippin. 'We hobbits ought to stick together, and we will. I shall go, unless they chain me up. There must be someone with intelligence in the party.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#93. Why O why did I ever leave my hobbit-hole? said poor Mr. Baggins, bumping up and down on Bombur's back.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#94. he was for long my only audience... Only from him did I ever get the idea that my 'stuff' could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#95. Touching your cap to the squire may be damn bad for the squire, but it's damn good for you.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#96. advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill. But what would you? You have not told me all concerning yourself; and how then shall I choose better than you? But if you demand advice, I will for friendship's sake give it.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#97. The romantic chivalric tradition takes, or at any rate has in the past taken, the young man's eye off women as they are, as companions in shipwreck not guiding stars.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#98. Orcs, and talking trees, and leagues of grass, and galloping riders, and glittering caves, and white towers and golden halls, and battles, and tall ships sailing, all these passed before Sam's mind.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#99. The whole atmosphere of the book, the tone of 'The Hobbit,' is of a kid's adventure story, told in the first person by Tolkien, who is introducing young people to the notion of Middle-earth. A lot of it is very light-hearted.
Ian McKellen
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