144 Inspiring J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes To Live By (2024)

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“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

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“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater”

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“Courage is found in unlikely places”

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“For nothing is evil in the beginning.”

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“The wise speak only of what they know.”

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

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“It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.”

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“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.”

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“It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.”

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“I am at home among trees.”

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“End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path. One that we all must take.”

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“The world is not in your books and maps; it is out there.”

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“Short cuts make long delays.”

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

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“Where there’s life there’s hope.”

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“Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!”

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“I will not say, do not weep, for not all tears are an evil.”

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“It is useless to meet revenge with revenge; it will heal nothing.”

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

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“Deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.”

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“I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to.”

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

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“Little by little, one travels far.”

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“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. from the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; renewed shall be blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king.”

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“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

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“I will not walk backward in life.”

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“Maybe the paths that you each shall tread are already laid before your feet though you do not see them.”

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“Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on on the story.”

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“'What course am I to take?' 'Towards danger; but not too rashly, nor too straight.'”

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“For not we but those who come after will make the legends of our time.”

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“Above all shadows rides the sun and Stars for ever dwell: I will not say the day is done, nor bid the stars farewell.”

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

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“How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand… there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep.”

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“A safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds.”

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“There is more in you of good than you know. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

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“So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their endings.”

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“Things might have been different, but they could not have been better.”

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

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“Grief is a hone to a hard mind.”

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“Go back?” he thought. “No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!” So up he got, and trotted along with his little sword held in front of him and one hand feeling the wall, and his heart all of a patter and a pitter.”

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“Curse the Baggins! It’s gone! What has it got in its pocketses? Oh we guess, we guess, my precious. He’s found it, yes he must have.”

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“There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?”

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“I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again.”

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“The Road goes ever on and on down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, and I must follow, if I can.”

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“A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.”

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“Darkness must pass a new day will come and when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.”

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“For we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.”

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“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”

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

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“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.”

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“Don’t go where I can’t follow!”

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“Fair speech may hide a foul heart.”

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“The brave things in the old tales and songs, adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for because they wanted them because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seems to have been just landed in them, usually — their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on — and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same — like old Mr. Bilbo. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into?”

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“The treacherous are ever distrustful.”

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“Have patience. Go where you must go, and hope!”

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“Better mistrust undeserved than rash words.”

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“Faithful heart may have forward tongue.”

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“I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam.”

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

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“Follow what may, great deeds are not lessened in worth.”

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“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”

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“It is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen.”

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“False hopes are more dangerous than fears.”

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“The blind was down; but outside the moon rose up out of the sea, and laid the silver path across the waters that is the way to places at the edge of the world and beyond, for those that can walk on it.”

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“Give with a free hand, but give of your own.”

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

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“The invention of languages is the foundation. The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows.”

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“Frodo gave a cry, and there was, fallen upon his knees at the chasm’s edge. But Gollum, dancing like a mad thing, held aloft the ring, a finger still thrust within its circle.”

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'"Deep is the abyss that is spanned by Durin’s Bridge, and none has measured it,' said Gimli. 'Yet it has a bottom, beyond light and knowledge,' said Gandalf."

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“I am with you at present,” said Gandalf, “but soon I shall not be. I am not coming to the Shire. You must settle its affairs yourselves; that is what you have been trained for. Do you not yet understand? My time is over: it is no longer my task to set things to right, nor to help folk to do so. And as for you, my dear friends, you will need no help. You are grown up now. Grown indeed very high; among the great you are, and I have no longer any fear at all for any of you.”

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“Don’t leave me here alone! It’s your Sam calling. Don’t go where I can’t follow! Wake up, Mr. Frodo! O wake up, Frodo, me dear, me dear. Wake up!”

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“As he gazed at it suddenly Sam understood, almost with a shock, that this stronghold had been built not to keep enemies out of Mordor, but to keep them in.”

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“For of us is required a blind trust, and a hope without assurance, knowing not what lies before us in a little while.”

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“Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking stick.”

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“I think I’m quite ready for another adventure.”

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“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.”

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“And he took her in his arms and kissed her under the sunlit sky, and he cared not that they stood high upon the walls in the sight of many.”

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“Such is oft 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.”

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“For you do not yet know the strengths of your hearts, and you cannot foresee what each may meet on the road.”

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“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.”

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“He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”

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“Advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.”

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“Time doesn’t seem to pass here: it just is.”

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“For still there are so many things that I have never seen: in every wood in every spring there is a different green.”

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“It’s a dangerous business going out of your front door. There’s no telling where you might be swept off to.”

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“It’s like in the great stories. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come.”

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“’Don’t the great tales never end?’ ‘No, they never end as tales,’ said Frodo. ‘But the people in them come, and go when their part’s ended. Our part will end later – or sooner.’”

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“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”

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

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“There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark.”

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“Every man has something too dear to trust to another.”

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“Do not spoil the wonder with haste!”

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“Courage will now be your best defense against the storm that is at hand - that and such hope as I bring.”

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“For so sworn good or evil an oath may not be broken and it shall pursue oathkeeper and oathbreaker to the world’s end.”

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“I am tired of stairs and stone passages. I would give a good deal for the feel of grass at my toes.”

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“Love not too well the work of thy hands and the devices of thy heart; and remember that the true hope of the Noldor lieth in the West, and cometh from the Sea.”

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“Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that came down to us from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures. And of these histories, most fair still in the ears of the Elves is the tale of Beren and Lúthien.”

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“The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and be 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.”

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“Small wonder that spell means both a story told, and a formula of power over living men.”

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

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“Why must you speak your thoughts? Silence, if fair words stick in your throat, would serve all our ends better.”

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“Misery misery! Hobbits won’t kill us, nice hobbits.”

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″‘Precious, precious, precious!’ Gollum cried. ‘My Precious! O my Precious!’ And with that, even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then with a shriek, he fell. Out of the depths came his last wail precious, and he was gone.”

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“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”

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“‘At last all such things must end,’ he said, ‘but I would have you wait a little while longer: for the end of the deeds that you have shared it has not yet come. A day draws near that I have looked for in all the years of my manhood, and when it comes I would have my friends beside me.‘”

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“And you’re with me. And the journey’s finished. But after coming all that way I don’t want to give up yet. It’s not like me, somehow, if you understand.”

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“In that hour of trial it was the love of his master that helped most to hold him firm; but also deep down in him lived still unconquered his plain hobbit-sense: he knew in the core of his heart that he was not large enough to bear such a burden, even if such visions were not a mere cheat to betray him.”

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“Well, you can go on looking forward. There may be many unexpected feasts ahead of you.”

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“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament… There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.”

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“I warn you, if you bore me, I shall take my revenge.”

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“You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin – to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours – closer than you yourself keep it. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends.”

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“Few can foresee whither their road will lead them, till they come to its end.”

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“And that’s the way of a real tale. Take any one that you’re fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don’t know. And you don’t want them to.”

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“Few other griefs amid the ill chances of this world have more bitterness and shame for a man’s heart than to behold the love of a lady so fair and brave that cannot be returned.”

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“And then her heart changed, or at least she understood it; and the winter passed, and the sun shone upon her.”

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“His grief he will not forget; but it will not darken his heart, it will teach him wisdom.”

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“But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund’s daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.”

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“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!”

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“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.”

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“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 this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?”

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“All’s well that ends better.”

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“Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature. I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum.”

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“What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature when he had a chance!”

“Pity? It was Pity that stayed in his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.”

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“I thought that Elves were all for moon and stars: but this is more elvish than anything I ever heard tell of. I feel as if I was inside a song, if you take my meaning.”

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“And people will say: ‘Let’s hear about Frodo and the Ring!’ And they’ll say: ‘Yes, that’s one of my favorite stories. Frodo was very brave, wasn’t he dad?’ ‘Yes, my boy, the most famous of the hobbits, and that’s saying a lot.‘”

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“...He had stuck to his master all the way; that was what he had chiefly come for, and he would still stick to him. His master would not go to Mordor alone.”

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“Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.”

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“Home is behind, the world ahead, and there are many paths to tread through shadows to the edge of night, until the stars are all alight. then world behind and home ahead, we’ll wander back and home to bed. mist and twilight, cloud and shade, away shall fade! Away shall fade!”

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“Still round the corner there may wait a new road or a secret gate and though I oft have passed them by a day will come at last when I shall take the hidden paths that run west of the moon, east of the sun.”

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“Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”

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“Often does hatred hurt itself!”

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“Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.”

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“For if joyful is the fountain that rises in the sun, its springs are in the wells of sorrow unfathomable at the foundations of the Earth.”

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“Hobbits always so polite, yes! O nice hobbits! Smeagol brings them up secret ways that nobody else could find. Tired he is, thirsty he is, yes thirsty; and he guides them and he searches for paths, and they saw sneak, sneak. Very nice friends, O yes my precious, very nice.”

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“Gollum’s eyes glinted. ‘He doesn’t know what we minds, does he, precious?’”

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"Let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy! For he is very wise and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart, the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of the reckoning."

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"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. We should seek a final end of this menace, even if we do not hope to make one."

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“Sam is an excellent fellow, and would jump down a dragon’s throat to save you, if he did not trip over his own feet.”

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“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament… There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.”

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“No half-heartedness and no worldly fear must turn us aside from following the light unflinchingly.”

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″‘Stew the rabbits!’ squealed Gollum in dismay. ‘Spoil beautiful meat Smeagol saved for you, poor hungry Smeagol!’”

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"With a terrible cry the Balrog fell forward, and its shadow plunged down and vanished. But even as it fell it swung its whip, and the thongs lashed and curled about the wizard’s knees, dragging him to the brink. He staggered and fell, grasped vainly at the stone, and slid into the abyss. ‘Fly, you fools!’ he cried, and was gone."

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“This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected.”

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“We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!”

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