Don't dip your beard in the foam, Father!" They cried to Thorin. "It is long enough without watering it!
J. R. R. TolkienWithout the high and noble the simple and vulgar is utterly mean; and without the simple and ordinary the noble and heroic is meaningless
J. R. R. TolkienYour time may come. Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot be always torn in two. You will have to be one and whole, for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be, and to do.
J. R. R. TolkienThis 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.
J. R. R. TolkienMost people have made this mistake of thinking Middle-earth is a particular kind of earth or is another planet of the science fiction sort but it's just an old fashioned word for this world we live in, as imagined surrounded by the Ocean.
J. R. R. TolkienFairy tale does not deny the existence of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance. It denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat...giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy; Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.
J. R. R. Tolkien