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

by J.R.R. Tolkien

they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favourite haunt.

peace and plenty were the rule in Middle-earth and the right of all sensible folk.

Bilbo and Frodo happened to have the same birthday, September 22nd.

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

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.

‘I pity snails, and all that carry their homes on their backs.’

‘They seem a bit above my likes and dislikes, so to speak,’

I don’t rightly know what I want: but I have something to do before the end, and it lies ahead, not in the Shire. I must see it through, sir, if you understand me.’

‘The trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves.

There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart of the fattest and most timid hobbit, waiting for some final and desperate danger to make it grow.

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.

Not all the birds are to be trusted,

‘a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all’.

There is naught that you can do, other than to resist, with hope or without it. But you do not stand alone.

‘Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens,’

‘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.

he laid his hand upon the tree beside the ladder: never before had he been so suddenly and so keenly aware of the feel and texture of a tree’s skin and of the life within it. He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself.

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

Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lórien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.