The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)

by J.R.R. Tolkien

laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times, and of six meals a day (when they could get them).

the Battle of Greenfields, S.R. 1147, in which Bandobras Took routed an invasion of Orcs.

Nonetheless, ease and peace had left this people still curiously tough.

They were, if it came to it, difficult to daunt or to kill;

could survive rough handling by grief, foe, or weather in a way that astonished those who did not know them well and looked no further than their bellies and their well-fed faces.

Since Meriadoc and Peregrin became the heads of their great families, and at the same time kept up their connexions with Rohan and Gondor, the libraries at Bucklebury and Tuckborough contained much that did not appear in the Red Book.

it seemed unfair that anyone should possess (apparently) perpetual youth as well as (reputedly) inexhaustible wealth.

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.

this is the END. I am going. I am leaving NOW. GOOD-BYE!

I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.

I might find somewhere where I can finish my book.

Bilbo flushed, and there was an angry light in his eyes. His kindly face grew hard. ‘Why not?’ he cried. ‘And what business is it of yours, anyway, to know what I do with my own things? It is my own. I found it. It came to me.’

‘It is mine, I tell you. My own. My Precious. Yes, my Precious.’

Sometimes I have felt it was like an eye looking at me.

A spasm of anger passed swiftly over the hobbit’s face again.

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, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say.

keep it secret, and keep it safe!

Frodo thought the old wizard looked unusually bent, almost as if he was carrying a great weight.

his closest friends were Peregrin Took (usually called Pippin), and Merry Brandybuck (his real name was Meriadoc, but that was seldom remembered).

He believed he had once seen an Elf in the woods, and still hoped to see more one day.

if he often uses the Ring to make himself invisible, he fades: he becomes in the end invisible permanently, and walks in the twilight under the eye of the Dark Power that rules the Rings.

Clearly the ring had an unwholesome power that set to work on its keeper at once. That was the first real warning I had that all was not well.

I waited. Until that night when he left this house. He said and did things then that filled me with a fear that no words of Saruman could allay. I knew at last that something dark and deadly was at work.

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

‘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.

Nine he gave to Mortal Men, proud and great, and so ensnared them. Long ago they fell under the dominion of the One, and they became Ringwraiths, shadows under his great Shadow, his most terrible servants.

he caught Déagol by the throat and strangled him, because the gold looked so bright and beautiful.

Unless it could be cured.’ Gandalf sighed. ‘Alas! there is little hope of that for him. Yet not no hope.

‘A Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo. It may slip off treacherously, but its keeper never abandons it.

it abandoned Gollum. Only to be picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable:

Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.’

Aragorn, the greatest traveller and huntsman of this age of the world.

he had made his slow, sneaking way, step by step, mile by mile, south, down at last to the Land of Mordor.’

‘Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need.

I do not feel any pity for Gollum.’ ‘You have not seen him,’ Gandalf broke in. ‘No, and I don’t want to,’

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life.

My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many – yours not least.

‘With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly.’

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.

You can learn all that there is to know about their ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they can still surprise you at a pinch.

‘I heard a deal that I didn’t rightly understand, about an enemy, and rings, and Mr. Bilbo, sir, and dragons, and a fiery mountain, and – and Elves, sir.

‘I have thought of something better than that. Something to shut your mouth, and punish you properly for listening. You shall go away with Mr. Frodo!’

what course am I to take?’ ‘Towards danger; but not too rashly, nor too straight,’

‘Coming, sir!’ came the answer from far within, followed soon by Sam himself, wiping his mouth. He had been saying farewell to the beer-barrel in the cellar.

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.

Frodo hesitated for a second: curiosity or some other feeling was struggling with his desire to hide.

the desire to get it out of his pocket became so strong that he began slowly to move his hand.

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

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

‘Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.’