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

He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. 'It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,' he used to say. 'You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.

He wondered what the mans name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil at heart, or what lies or threats had lead him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really have rather stayed there in peace

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

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!

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

I have an unsatisfied desire to shoot well with a bow.

The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.

What do you mean? 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 on this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?

But how powerful, how stimulating to the very faculty that produced it, was the invention of the adjective. ... The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water. If it could do the one, it could do the other; it inevitably did both. When we can take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter's power.