Middle English is an exciting field - almost uncharted, I begin to think, because as soon as one turns detailed personal attention… — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
Most people have made this mistake of thinking Middle-earth is a particular kind of earth or is another planet of the science… — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
But to Sam the evening deepened to darkness as he stood at the Haven; and as he looked at the grey sea… — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
He loved mountains, or he had loved the thought of them marching on the edge of stories brought from far away; but… — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
Middle-earth is our world. I have (of course) placed the action in a purely imaginary (though not wholly impossible) period of antiquity,… — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
I never liked Hans Christian Andersen because I knew he was always getting at me. — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
No half-heartedness and no worldly fear must turn us aside from following the light unflinchingly. — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
If you don't know where you're going, you'll wind up somewhere else. Not all those who wander are lost. — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
The enemy? His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is, where he came from. And… — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
Much of the same sort of degraded and filthy talk can still be heard among the orc-minded; dreary and repetitive with hatred and contempt,… — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
Many are the strange chances of the world, and help oft shall come from the hands of the weak when the Wise falter. — J. R. R. Tolkien Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
