Top 500 J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes (2023 Update)
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201. “The treacherous are ever distrustful.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

202. “Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

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

— J. R. R. Tolkien

204. “Memory is not what the heart desires.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

205. “If we all got angry together something might be done.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

206. “For I am the daughter of Elrond. I shall not go with him when he departs to the Havens: for mine is the choice of Luthien, and as she so have I chosen, both the sweet and the bitter.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

207. “Gandalf: Three hundred lives of men I have walked this earth and now I have no time.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

208. “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.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

209. “We meet again, at the turn of the tide. A great storm is coming, but the tide has turned.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

210. “The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

211. “I have spoken words of hope. But only of hope. Hope is not victory.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

212. “Farewell! wherever you fare, till your eyries receive you at the journey’s end!”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

213. “Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

214. “My ‘Sam Gamgee’ is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

215. “Without the high and noble the simple and vulgar is utterly mean; and without the simple and ordinary the noble and heroic is meaningless.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

216. “I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

217. “This is the ending. Now not day only shall be beloved, but night too shall be beautiful and blessed and all its fear pass away.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

218. “The world changes, and all that once was strong now proves unsure.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

219. “His face was sad and stern because of the doom that was laid on him, and yet hope dwelt ever in the depths of his heart, from which mirth would arise at times like a spring from a rock.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

220. “But he that sows lies in the end shall not lack of a harvest, and soon he may rest from toil indeed, while others reap and sow in his stead.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

221. “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.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

222. “I have no help to send, therefore I must go myself.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

223. “If you’re referring to the incident with the Dragon, I was barely involved. All I did was give your uncle a little nudge out of the door.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

224. “To be a cult figure in one’s own lifetime is most unpleasant.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

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

— J. R. R. Tolkien

226. “Courage is found in unlikely places,’ said Gildor. ‘Be of good hope!”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

227. “It gives me great pleasure, a good name. I always in writing start with a name. Give me a name and it produces a story, not the other way about normally.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

228. “Instead of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen, not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me and despair!”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

229. “We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious. They stole it from us. Sneaky little hobbitses. Wicked, tricksy, false!”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

230. “Far over misty mountains cold To dungeons deep and caverns old We must away, ere break of day, To find our long-forgotten gold.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

231. “Their ‘magic’ is Art, delivered from many of its human limitations.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

232. “No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

233. “Out of doubt, out of dark to the day’s rising I came singing into the sun, sword unsheathing. To hope’s end I rode and to heart’s breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

234. “Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.’ ‘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. And already, Frodo, our time is beginning to look black. The Enemy is fast becoming very strong.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

235. “I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

236. “I would have followed you. My brother. My captain. My king.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

237. “Adventures are not all pony-rides in May-sunshine.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

238. “Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

239. “And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

240. “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.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

241. “For victory is victory, however small, nor is its worth only from what follows from it.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

242. “He stands not alone. You would die before your stroke fell.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

243. “Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

244. “And here he was, a little halfling from the Shire, a simple hobbit of the quiet countryside, expected to find a way where the great ones could not go, or dared not go. It was an evil fate.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

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

— J. R. R. Tolkien

246. “We are never late. We arrive precisely when we mean to.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

247. “It is the way of my people to use light words at such times and say less than they mean. We fear to say too much. It robs us of the right words when a jest is out of place.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

248. “We set out to save the Shire, Sam and it has been saved – but not for me.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

249. “I felt a curious thrill, as if something had stirred in me, half wakened from sleep. There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words, if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

250. “Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien