I shall claim full amends for every fall and stubbed toe, if you do not lead us well.

You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: and allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power.

My political opinions lean more and more to anarchy. The most improper job of any man, even saints, is bossing other men. There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power stations. I hope that, encouraged now as patriotism, may remain a habit.

Farewell sweet earth and northern sky, for ever blest, since here did lie and here with lissom limbs did run beneath the Moon, beneath the Sun, Lúthien Tinúviel more fair than Mortal tongue can tell. Though all to ruin fell the world and were dissolved and backward hurled; unmade into the old abyss, yet were its making good, for this - the dusk, the dawn, the earth, the sea - that Lúthien for a time should be.

This of course is the way to talk to dragons, if you don't want to reveal your proper name which is wise, and don't want to infuriate them by a flat refusal which is also very wise. No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of wasting time to trying to understand it.

Dead men are not friends to living men, and give them no gifts. (Ghan-buri-Ghan, of allies during war)

Look, up at the sky. There is a light, a beauty up there, that no shadow can touch