J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes

If you do not believe in a personal God, the question: ‘What is the purpose of life?’ is unaskable and unanswerable.

You have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.

It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.

Courage is found in unlikely places.

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

In October 1920 I went to Leeds as Reader in English Language, with a free commission to develop the linguistic side of a large and growing School of English Studies, in which no regular provision had as yet been made for the linguistic specialist.

Why was I chosen?’ ‘Such questions cannot be answered,’ said Gandalf. ‘You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.

I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White.

Living by faith includes the call to something greater than cowardly self-preservation.

The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or, what is most important of all, the banker of the backer.

Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.

Above all shadows rides the sun.

The greatest adventure is what lies ahead.
Today and tomorrow are yet to be said.
The chances, the changes are all yours to make.
The mold of your life is in your hands to break.

The original ‘Hobbit’ was never intended to have a sequel – Bilbo ‘remained very happy to the end of his days and those were extraordinarily long’: a sentence I find an almost insuperable obstacle to a satisfactory link.

If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it’s my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth.

All’s well that ends better.

A pen is to me as a beak is to a hen.