It was at this point that Bilbo stopped. Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterward were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait.

A few melancholy birds were pipping and wailing, until the round red sun sank slowly into the western shadows; then an empty silence fell

Far over misty mountains cold To dungeons deep and caverns old We must away, ere break of day, To find our long-forgotten gold.

Over the field rang his clear voice calling: ‘Death! Ride, ride to ruin and the world’s ending!

I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it's very difficult to find anyone.

Middle-earth is our world. I have (of course) placed the action in a purely imaginary (though not wholly impossible) period of antiquity, in which the shape of the continental masses was different.

Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right (used or misused). The right has not decayed. We make still by the law in which we're made.