For myself, I find I become less cynical rather than more--remembering my own sins and follies; and realize that men's hearts are not often as bad as their acts, and very seldom as bad as their words.

Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.

Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.

Speak, or I will put a dint in your hat that even a wizard will find hard to deal with!

Without the high and noble the simple and vulgar is utterly mean; and without the simple and ordinary the noble and heroic is meaningless

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.