1,027 Quotes by J. R. R. Tolkien

There was a solemn article in the local paper seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are rattlesnakes, and don't know the difference between good and evil! (What of the writer?) The Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done.

Trolls are slow in the uptake, and mighty suspicious about anything new to them.

out of the frying pan and into the fire

Thief, thief, thief! Baggins! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it forever!

My own dear mother was a martyr indeed, and it is not to everybody that God grants so easy a way to his great gifts as he did to Hilary and myself, giving us a mother who killed herself with labour and trouble to ensure us keeping the faith.

A few melancholy birds were pipping and wailing, until the round red sun sank slowly into the western shadows; then an empty silence fell

It matters little who is the enemy, if we cannot beat off his attack.

He [Bilbo] fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait.

This thing all things devours: Birds, beasts, trees, flowers; Gnaws iron, bites steel; Grinds hard stones to meal; Slays king, ruins town, And beats high mountain down.