J. r. r. tolkien quotes

A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.

Justice is not Healing. Healing cometh only by suffering and patience, and maketh no demand, not even for Justice. Justice worketh only within the bonds of things as they are... and therefore though Justice is itself good and desireth no further evil, it can but perpetuate the evil that was, and doth not prevent it from the bearing of fruit in sorrow.

How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart, you begin to understand, there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep...that have taken hold.

Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.

The birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus means that one day everything sad will come untrue.

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

The wise speak only of what they know

The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or, what is most important of all, the banker of the backer.

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.

Fear both the heat and the cold of your heart, and strive for patience, if you can.

I have in this War a burning private grudge — which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.

You have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.

I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

There is a place called ‘heaven’ where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued. We may laugh together yet.

For still there are so many things that I have never seen: in every wood in every spring there is a different green.

It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish.

You have to understand the good in things, to detect the real evil.

Above all shadows rides the sun.

Why was I chosen?' 'Such questions cannot be answered,' said Gandalf. 'You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tower high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

I am not a 'democrat' only because 'humility' and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the attempt to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of power--and then we get and are getting slavery.

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

Living by faith includes the call to something greater than cowardly self-preservation.

Maybe the paths that you each shall tread are already laid before your feet though you do not see them

evil labours with vast power and perpetual success - in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in.

The chief purpose of life, for any of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks.

Advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.

The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.

Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!

Little by little, one travels far

Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.

There are no safe paths in this part of the world. Remember you are over the Edge of the Wild now, and in for all sorts of fun wherever you go.

Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?

There are truths, that are beyond us, transcendent truths, about beauty, truth, honor, etc. There are truths that man knows exist, but they cannot be seen - they are immaterial, but no less real, to us. It is only through the language of myth that we can speak of these truths.

All that is gold does not glitter.

I am a Christian…so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’ — though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.

For you do not yet know the strengths of your hearts, and you cannot foresee what each may meet on the road.

His grief he will not forget; but it will not darken his heart, it will teach him wisdom.

If we all got angry together something might be done.

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.

Deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.

Speak politely to an enraged dragon.

Things will go as they will, and there is no need to hurry to meet them.

Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.

The world has changed. I see it in the water. I feel it in the Earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, For none now live who remember it.

The burned hand teaches best.

The greater part of the truth is always hidden, in regions out of the reach of cynicism.

For myself, I find I become less cynical rather than more--remembering my own sins and follies; and realize that men's hearts are not often as bad as their acts, and very seldom as bad as their words.

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.

All have their worth and each contributes to the worth of the others.

There is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.

Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.

It is not the strength of the body that counts, but the strength of the spirit.

May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.

The treacherous are ever distrustful.

We are never late. We arrive precisely when we mean to.

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.

You aren't nearly through this adventure yet.

Don't adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on on the story.

Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament....There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, that every man's heart desires

The world is not in your books and maps, it's out there.

A story must be told or there'll be no story, yet it is the untold stories that are most moving.

I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it's very difficult to find anyone.

All's well that ends better.

I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White.

A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.

I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago, and of people who will see a world that I shall never know.

After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth'.

Let the unseen days be. Today is more than enough.

For we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.

It's a dangerous business, going out your door.

It simply isn't an adventure worth telling if there aren't any dragons.

Fairy tale does not deny the existence of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance. It denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat...giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy; Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet it is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: Small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.

Where there are so many, all speech becomes a debate without end. But two together may perhaps find wisdom.

Pippin: I didn't think it would end this way. Gandalf: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path... One that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass... And then you see it. Pippin: What? Gandalf?... See what? Gandalf: White shores... and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise. Pippin: Well, that isn't so bad. Gandalf: No... No it isn't.

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?

Short cuts make long delays.

I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to

You can only come to the morning through the shadows.

Courage is found in unlikely places.

Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?

May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks.

He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.

A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.

No half-heartedness and no worldly fear must turn us aside from following the light unflinchingly.

American English is essentially English after having been wiped off with a dirty sponge.

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.

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 love only that which they defend.

History often resembles myth, because they are both ultimately of the same stuff.

Where will wants not, a way opens.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

It is no bad thing celebrating a simple life.

A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.

Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.

If you don't know where you're going, you'll wind up somewhere else. Not all those who wander are lost.

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

Courage will now be your best defence against the storm that is at hand-—that and such hope as I bring.

I am dreading the publication, for it will be impossible not to mind what is said. I have exposed my heart to be shot at.

The greatest adventure is what lies ahead. Today and tomorrow are yet to be said. The chances, the changes are all yours to make. The mold of your life is in your hands to break.

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 myth-making, only by becoming 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.

The most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

True education is a kind of never ending story — a matter of continual beginnings, of habitual fresh starts, of persistent newness.

Not everyone who wanders is lost.

I don't want to be in a battle. But waiting on the edge of one I can't escape is even worse.

The Resurrection was the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the greatest Fairy Story — and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love.

The greatest adventure is what lies ahead

Do not spoil the wonder with haste!

I warn you, if you bore me, I shall take my revenge.

We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human, is still soaked with the sense of exile.

One tiny Hobbit against all the evil the world could muster. A sane being would have given up, but Samwise burned with a magnificent madness, a glowing obsession to surmount every obstacle, to find Frodo, destroy the Ring, and cleanse Middle Earth of its festering malignancy. He knew he would try again. Fail, perhaps. And try once more. A thousand, thousand times if need be, but he would not give up the quest.

It is perilous to study too deeply the arts of the Enemy, for good or for ill.

False hopes are more dangerous than fears.

There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.

If you do not believe in a personal God, the question: 'What is the purpose of life?' is unaskable and unanswerable.

I've always been impressed that we are here, surviving, because of the indomitable courage of quite small people against impossible odds.

There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something.

It is useless to meet revenge with revenge; it will heal nothing.

End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path... One that we all must take.

It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass.

I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.

We may indeed in counsel point to the higher road, but we cannot compel any free creature to walk upon it. That leadeth to tyranny, which disfigureth good and maketh it seem hateful.

How do you move on? You move on when your heart finally understands that there is no turning back.