Alive without breath, As cold as death; Never thirsty, ever drinking, All in mail never clinking.

Why must you speak your thoughts? Silence, if fair words stick in your throat, would serve all our ends better.

Thank you, Sam," he said in a cracked whisper. "How far is there to go?" I don't know," said Sam, "because I don't know where we're going.

Frodo drew himself up, and again Sam was startled by his words and his stern voice. 'On the Precious? How dare you?' he said. 'Think! Would you commit your promise to that, Smeagol? It will hold you. But it is more treacherous than you are. It may twist your words. Beware!

And yet, Eomer, I say to you that she loves you more truly than me, for you she loves and knows; but in me she loves only a shadow and a thought: a hope of glory and great deeds, and lands far from the fields of Rohan. - Aragorn to Eomer, of Eowyn

I have never had much confidence in my own work, and even now when I am assured (still much to my grateful surprise) that it has value for other people, I feel diffident, reluctant as it were to expose my world of imagination to possibly contemptuous eyes and ears.

For even the very wise cannot see all ends.