My 'Sam Gamgee' is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself.

The burned hand teaches best. After that, advice about fire goes to the heart.

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

For still there are so many things that I have never seen: in every wood in every spring there is a different green.

Let him go, you filth! Let him go! You will not touch him again!

It is the way of my people to use light words at such times and say less than they mean. We fear to say too much. It robs us of the right words when a jest is out of place.

I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.