Words matter. These are the best J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.
It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.
A pen is to me as a beak is to a hen.
Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.
You have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.
A safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds.
It may be the part of a friend to rebuke a friend’s folly.
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.
I dislike Allegory – the conscious and intentional allegory – yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language.
Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‘real’ world.
They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited ‘first chapters’. I have indeed written many.
Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and 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.
I should like to save the Shire, if I could – though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them.
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.
Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today; for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favourite haunt.
If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it’s my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth.
Short cuts make long delays.
In October 1920 I went to Leeds as Reader in English Language, with a free commission to develop the linguistic side of a large and growing School of English Studies, in which no regular provision had as yet been made for the linguistic specialist.
‘I wish life was not so short,’ he thought. ‘Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.’
Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.
Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.
So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending!
A box without hinges, key, or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid.
