Hobbit Virtues Quotes

“This is the hour of the Shire-folk,” declares Elrond, “when they arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the Great.”
― Christopher A. Snyder, Hobbit Virtues: Rediscovering J. R. R. Tolkien's Ethics from The Lord of the Rings

“Tolkien’s protagonists are heroes not because of their successes, which are often limited,” writes John Garth, “but because of their courage and tenacity in trying.”
― Christopher A. Snyder, Hobbit Virtues: Rediscovering J. R. R. Tolkien's Ethics from The Lord of the Rings

“It is demonstrated in the words and acts of the old warrior Beorhtwold as he prepares to die fighting against Viking invaders next to his lord, Beorhtnoth, at the Battle of Maldon in AD 991: Hige sceal þē heardra, heorte þē cēnre, mōd sceal þē māre,    þē ūre mægen lytlað. Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, Spirit the greater, as our strength lessens.”
― Christopher A. Snyder, Hobbit Virtues: Rediscovering J. R. R. Tolkien's Ethics from The Lord of the Rings

“Come, Mr. Frodo!” he cried. “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you and it as well. So up you get! Come on, Mr. Frodo dear! Sam will give you a ride.…”
― Christopher A. Snyder, Hobbit Virtues: Rediscovering J. R. R. Tolkien's Ethics from The Lord of the Rings

“Courage is a classical virtue because it is the rational and appropriate response to fear, while cowardice and recklessness are the extreme responses or vices.”
― Christopher A. Snyder, Hobbit Virtues: Rediscovering J. R. R. Tolkien's Ethics from The Lord of the Rings

“There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage, and some wisdom, blended in good measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
― Christopher A. Snyder, Hobbit Virtues: Rediscovering J. R. R. Tolkien's Ethics from The Lord of the Rings

“Ancient virtues may lay for many years dormant. It does not mean that they are dead. We Hobbits need merely discover them, plant them in new soil, tend our little garden with care, and wait with sunlit hope for them to spring leaf and flower again in a new age.”
― Christopher A. Snyder, Hobbit Virtues: Rediscovering J. R. R. Tolkien's Ethics from The Lord of the Rings

“We are increasingly abandoning Aristotle’s view of paideia—learning and habituating virtues for personal flourishing and the common good—in favor of technical-instrumental education leading to private wealth for some, argues philosopher Richard Eldridge: “to abandon the cultivation of virtues and instead to teach only in order to produce measurable outcomes is to capitulate to an individualist culture of instrumental control and private satisfactions.”44”
― Christopher A. Snyder, Hobbit Virtues: Rediscovering J. R. R. Tolkien's Ethics from The Lord of the Rings

“Being little in a big world can be one way of describing people who are marginalized socially and politically. While Tolkien certainly enjoyed aspects of white privilege and served in the military of an imperialist power, he wrote about a multicultural secondary world, discussed race relations in that world, and chose to write frequently from the perspective of the little people (Hobbits), of lands threatened by industrialization (the Shire, Fangorn Forest), and of women whose power is dismissed or misunderstood (Éowyn, Galadriel). It would be far off the mark to describe Tolkien as progressive,”
― Christopher A. Snyder, Hobbit Virtues: Rediscovering J. R. R. Tolkien's Ethics from The Lord of the Rings

“Sam’s constant deference and humility make many modern readers uncomfortable with its connotations of class difference, and in Peter Jackson’s films this differential between Frodo and Sam is softened a bit.”
― Christopher A. Snyder, Hobbit Virtues: Rediscovering J. R. R. Tolkien's Ethics from The Lord of the Rings