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

by J.R.R. Tolkien

At that time Frodo was still in his tweens, as the hobbits called the irresponsible twenties between childhood and coming of age at thirty-three.

‘Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can’t be right. I need a change, or something.’

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

We are horribly afraid – but we are coming with you; or following you like hounds.’

‘ “Ass! Fool! Thrice worthy and beloved Barliman!” said I. “It’s the best news I have had since Midsummer; it’s worth a gold piece at the least. May your beer be laid under an enchantment of surpassing excellence for seven years!”

‘I have never known you give me pleasant advice before,’ he said. ‘As all your unpleasant advice has been good, I wonder if this advice is not bad.

It is true that if these hobbits understood the danger, they would not dare to go. But they would still wish to go, or wish that they dared, and be shamed and unhappy.