And now leave me in peace for a bit! I don't want to answer a string of questions while I am eating. I want to think!" "Good Heavens!" said Pippin. "At breakfast?

Dear me! We Tooks and Brandybucks, we can't live long on the heights.' 'No,' said Merry. 'I can't. Not yet, at any rate. But at least, Pippin, we can now see them, and honour them. It is best to love first what you are fitted to love, I suppose: you must start somewhere and have some roots, and the soil of the Shire is deep. Still there are things deeper and higher; and not a gaffer could tend his garden in what he calls peace but for them, whether he knows about them or not.

Hammer and tongs! I am so torn between rage and joy, that if I do not burst, it will be a marvel!

Green are the leaves I leave in Mirkwood.

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.

I will not say, do not weep, for not all tears are an evil.

The Bagginses had lived in the neighbourhood of The Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him.