Top 500 J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “Let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

302. “Snow’s all right on a fine morning, but I like to be in bed when it’s falling.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

303. “There cannot be any ‘story’ without a fall – all stories are ultimately about the fall – at least not for human minds as we know them and have them.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

304. “It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish, as my old gaffer used to say.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

305. “The doom lies in yourself, not in your name.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

306. “And it is not our part here to take thought only for a season, or for a few lives of Men, or for a passing age of the world.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

307. “With hope or without hope we will follow the trail of our enemies. And woe to them, if we prove the swifter!”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

308. “Pay heed to the tales of old wives. It may well be that they alone keep in memory what it was once needful for the wise to know.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

309. “On their deathbed men will speak true, they say.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

310. “No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of wasting time trying to understand it.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

311. “I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

312. “Many evil things there are that your strong walls and bright swords do not stay.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

313. “For behold! the storm comes, and now all friends should gather together, lest each singly be destroyed.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

314. “Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

315. “Ho! Ho! Ho! To the bottle I go To heal my heart and drown my woe Rain may fall, and wind may blow And many miles be still to go But under a tall tree will I lie And let the clouds go sailing by.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

316. “But there, my friends, songs like trees bear fruit only in their own time and their own way: and sometimes they are withered untimely.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

317. “Hobbits give presents to other people on their own birthdays. Not very expensive ones, as a rule, and not so lavishly as on this occasion; but it was not a bad system.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

318. “It is written in my life-blood, such that it is, thick or thin; and I can no other.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

319. “A good vocabulary is not acquired by reading books written according to some notion of the vocabulary of one’s age group. It comes from reading books above one.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

320. “The Darkness has begun. There will be no dawn.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

321. “I want to see mountains again, Gandalf, mountains, and then find somewhere where I can rest. In peace and quiet, without a lot of relatives prying around, and a string of confounded visitors hanging on the bell. I might find somewhere where I can finish my book. I have thought of a nice ending for it: and he lived happily ever after to the end of his days.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

322. “Evidently we look so much alike that your desire to make an incurable dent in my hat must be excused.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

323. “The misty morning crawleth grey from dusk to the reluctant day.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

324. “The wolf that one hears is worse than the orc that one fears.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

325. “Venice seemed incredibly lovely, elvishly lovely – to me like a dream of Old Gondor, or Pelargir of the Numenorean Ships, before the return of the Shadow.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

326. “He may become like a glass filled with a clear light for eyes to see that can.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

327. “But good luck to you – today and every day!”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

328. “And thus it came to pass that the Silmarils found their long homes: one in the airs of heaven, and one in the fires of the heart of the world, and one in the deep waters.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

329. “My Precious, my Precious.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

330. “Your lullaby would waken a drunken goblin!”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

331. “Already he was a very different hobbit from the one that had run out without a pocket-handkerchief from Bag-End long ago. He had not had a pocket-handkerchief for ages.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

332. “Seek for the Sword that was broken In Imladris it dwells; There shall be counsels taken Stronger than Morgul-spells. There shall be shown a token That Doom is near at hand, For Isuldur’s Bane shall waken, And the halfling forth shall stand.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

333. “A traitor may betray himself and do good he does not intend.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

334. “For a while they stood there, like men on the edge of a sleep where nightmare lurks, holding it off, though they know that they can only come to morning through the shadows.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

335. “You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: and allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

336. “Truly songs and tales fall utterly short of the reality, O Smaug the Chiefest and greatest of Calamities.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

337. “The strongest must seek a way, say you? But I say: let a ploughman plough, but choose an otter for swimming, and for running light over grass and leaf, or over snow- an Elf!”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

338. “The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

339. “But it is not for thy valour only that I send thee, but to bring into the world a hope beyond thy sight, and a light that shall pierce the darkness.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

340. “I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.’ ‘What do you fear, lady?’ he asked. ‘A cage,’ she said. ‘To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

341. “Yes, I am here. And you are lucky to be here too after all the absurd things you’ve done since you left home.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

342. “Bilbo saw that the moment had come when he must do something.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

343. “Then Elrond and Galadriel rode on; for the Third Age was over and the Days of the Rings were passed and an end was come of the story and song of those times.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

344. “And he sang to them, now in the Elven tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

345. “Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

346. “Many are the strange chances of the world,? said Mithrandir, ’and help oft shall come from the hands of the weak when the Wise falter.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

347. “Then Frodo came forward and took the crown from Faramir and bore it to Gandalf; and Aragorn knelt, and Gandalf set the White Crown upon his head and said: Now come the days of the King, and may they be blessed while the thrones of the Valar endure!”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

348. “I fear that in my eagerness to persuade you, I lost patience. And indeed I regret it.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

349. “We don’t want any adventures here! You might try over the Hill or Across the Water.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien

350. “He knew that all the hazards and perils were now drawing together to a point: the next day would be a day of doom, the day of final effort or disaster, the last gasp.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien