please don't cook me, kind sirs! I am a good cook myself, and cook better than I cook, if you see what I mean.

I wish life was not so short. Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.

What do you fear, lady?' he asked. 'A cage,' she said.

We are plain quiet folk, and I have no use for adventures. Nasty, disturbing, and uncomfortable things.

Hammer and tongs! I am so torn between rage and joy, that if I do not burst, it will be a marvel!

There was a solemn article in the local paper seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are rattlesnakes, and don't know the difference between good and evil! (What of the writer?) The Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done.

Dear me! We Tooks and Brandybucks, we can't live long on the heights.' 'No,' said Merry. 'I can't. Not yet, at any rate. But at least, Pippin, we can now see them, and honour them. It is best to love first what you are fitted to love, I suppose: you must start somewhere and have some roots, and the soil of the Shire is deep. Still there are things deeper and higher; and not a gaffer could tend his garden in what he calls peace but for them, whether he knows about them or not.