There I lay staring upward, while the stars wheeled over... Faint to my ears came the gathered rumor of all lands: the springing and the dying, the song and the weeping, and the slow everlasting groan of overburdened stone.

Such bees! Bilbo had never seen anything like them. "If one were to sting me," He thought "I should swell up as big as I am!

I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.

Faerie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary, and dungeons for the overbold.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many - yours not least.

Art is the human process that produces by the way (it is not its only or ultimate object) Secondary Belief.

The wolf that one hears is worse than the orc that one fears.