Fear nothing! Have peace until the morning! Heed no nightly noises!

Courage will now be your best defence against the storm that is at hand-—that and such hope as I bring.

I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

The washing-up was so dismally real that Bilbo was forced to believe the party of the night before had not been part of his bad dreams, as he had rather hoped.

I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighborhood. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever the cost of peril.

Criticism - however valid or intellectually engaging - tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require practice, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will lose grace (and probably fall off).

And if Sam considered himself lucky, Frodo knew he was more lucky himself; for there was not a hobbit in the Shire that was looked after with such care.