Touching your cap to the Squire may be damn bad for the Squire, but it's damn good for you.

The world changes, and all that once was strong now proves unsure.

If your first Christmas tree is a wilting eucalyptus and if you're normally troubled by heat and sand... then, to have just at the age when imagination is opening out, suddenly find yourself in a quiet Warwickshire village, I think it engenders a particular love of what you might call central Midlands English countryside. Based on good water, stones and elm trees and small quiet rivers and so on, and of course, rustic people about.

There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark.

Where did you go to, if I may ask?' said Thorin to Gandalf as they rode along. To look ahead,' said he. And what brought you back in the nick of time?' Looking behind,' said he.

You ought not to be rude to an eagle, when you are only the size of a hobbit, and are up in hid eyrie at night!

It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass.