Top 500 J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “True courage is about knowing not when to take a life, but when to spare one.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

102. “The wise speak only of what they know.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

103. “It is mine, I tell you. My own. My precious. Yes, my precious.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

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

— J. R. R. Tolkien

105. “Together we will take the road that leads into the West, And far away will find a land where both our hearts may rest.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

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

— J. R. R. Tolkien

107. “You can only come to the morning through the shadows.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

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

— J. R. R. Tolkien

109. “If this is victory, then our hands are too small to hold it.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

110. “Don’t go where I can’t follow!”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

111. “I threw down my enemy, and he fell from the high place and broke the mountain-side where he smote it in his ruin.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

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

— J. R. R. Tolkien

113. “Third time pays for all.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

114. “The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

115. “Where there’s life there’s hope, and need of vittles.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

116. “If by my life or death I can protect you, I will.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

117. “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.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

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

— J. R. R. Tolkien

119. “All that glitters is not gold.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

120. “Not idly do the leaves of Lorien fall.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

121. “Aure entuluva! day shall come again!”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

122. “But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

123. “And she looked at him and saw the grave tenderness in his eyes, and yet knew, for she was bred among men of war, that here was one whom no Rider of the Mark could outmatch in battle.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

124. “Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears. “After all this time?” “Always,” said Snape.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

125. “Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

126. “Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

127. “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.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

128. “Such is of 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.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

129. “Handsome is as handsome does.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

130. “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.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

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

— J. R. R. Tolkien

132. “A pen is to me as a beak is to a hen.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

133. “Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens,’ said Gimli. ‘Maybe,’ said Elrond, ‘but let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall.’ ‘Yet sworn word may strengthen quaking heart,’ said Gimli. ‘Or break it,’ said Elrond.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

134. “Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

135. “It was at this point that Bilbo stopped. Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterward were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

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

— J. R. R. Tolkien

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

— J. R. R. Tolkien

138. “Let the unseen days be. Today is more than enough.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

139. “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

140. “In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

141. “If you’re going to have a complicated story you must work to a map; otherwise you’ll never make a map of it afterwards.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

142. “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.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

143. “In doubt a man of worth will trust to his own wisdom.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

144. “I want to be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

145. “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?”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

146. “But in the end it’s only a passing thing, this shadow; even darkness must pass.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

147. “To whatever end. Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? They have passed like rain on the mountains. Like wind in the meadow. The days have gone down in the west. Behind the hills, into shadow. How did it come to this?”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

148. “Where will wants not, a way opens.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

149. “Fear both the heat and the cold of your heart, and try to have patience, if you can.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

150. “It’s a dangerous business, going out your door.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien