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The Lord of the Rings

This is a portal page for quotes from the three standard volumes of the novel The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. For quotations from the movie adaptations, go to the page for The Lord of the Rings movies.

The following four titles are links to separate pages of quotes from each of the three volumes, and the appendices:
 * Books I and II - The Fellowship of the Ring
 * Books III and IV - The Two Towers
 * Books V and VI - The Return of the King
 * Appendices to The Lord of the Rings

Foreword to the Second Edition (October 1966)

 * The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them.

 * Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.

 * The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the book or to write it again, he will pass over these in silence, except one that has been noted by others: the book is too short.

 * I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

A

 * I rarely remember a book about which I have had such violent arguments. Nobody seems to have a moderate opinion: either, like myself, people find it a masterpiece of its genre or they cannot abide it, and among the hostile there are some, I must confess, for whose literary judgment I have great respect. A few of these may have been put off by the first forty pages of the first chapter of the first volume in which the daily life of the hobbits is described; this is light comedy and light comedy is not Mr. Tolkien's forte. In most cases, however, the objection must go far deeper. I can only suppose that some people object to Heroic Quests and Imaginary Worlds on principle; such, they feel, cannot be anything but light "escapist" reading. That a man like Mr. Tolkien, the English philologist who teaches at Oxford, should lavish such incredible pains upon a genre which is, for them, trifling by definition, is, therefore, very shocking.
 * W. H. Auden, "At the End of the Quest, Victory", in The New York Times (22 January 1956)

 * To present the conflict between Good and Evil as a war in which the good side is ultimately victorious is a ticklish business. Our historical experience tells us that physical power and, to a large extent, mental power are morally neutral and effectively real: wars are won by the stronger side, just or unjust. ... As readers of the preceding volumes will remember, the situation in the War of the Ring is as follows: Chance, or Providence, has put the Ring in the hands of the representatives of Good, Elrond, Gandalf, Aragorn. By using it they could destroy Sauron, the incarnation of evil, but at the cost of becoming his successor. If Sauron recovers the Ring, his victory will be immediate and complete, but even without it his power is greater than any his enemies can bring against him, so that, unless Frodo succeeds in destroying the Ring, Sauron must win. ... The demands made on the writer's powers in an epic as long as "The Lord of the Rings" are enormous and increase as the tale proceeds — the battles have to get more spectacular, the situations more critical, the adventures more thrilling — but I can only say that Mr. Tolkien has proved equal to them.
 * W. H. Auden, "At the End of the Quest, Victory", in The New York Times (22 January 1956)

 * One of Tolkien's most impressive achievements is that he succeeds in convincing the reader that the mistakes which Sauron makes to his own undoing are the kinds of mistake which Evil, however powerful, cannot help making, just because it is evil. A good person always enjoys one advantage over an evil person, namely, that, while a good person can imagine what it would be like to be evil, an evil person cannot imagine what it would be like to be good. Elrond, Gandalf, Galadriel, Aragorn are able to imagine themselves as Sauron and can therefore resist the temptation to use the Ring themselves, but Sauron cannot imagine that anyone who knows what the Ring can accomplish, his own destruction among other things, will refrain from using it, let alone try to destroy it. Had he been capable of imagining this, he had only to sit watching and waiting in Mordor for the Ring Bearer to arrive, and he would have been bound to catch him and recover the Ring. Instead, he assumes that the Ring has been taken to Gondor where the strongest of his enemies are gathered, for this is what he would have done had he been in their place, and launches an attack on that city, neglecting the watch on his own borders.
 * W. H. Auden, "Good and Evil in the Lord of the Rings", (1967)

C

 * In the highest and most complimentary sense, this is escapist fiction at its finest, yet at the same time it has profound relevance to our troubled age."
 * Arthur C. Clarke The Sunday Telegraph quoted in Press Release The Lord of the Rings

The major theme of both works is the war and eventual victory, despite all odds, of an alliance of good folk against vastly more powerful forces of evil, and the return of a king to his rightful state. Like Lord of the Rings, Chesterton's poem is set in a heroic society after the decay of a highly civilized imperial power — in England, that is to say, in the aftermath of the Roman Empire. (Tolkien's Minas Tirith, built on seven levels, greatly resembles a medieval idealization of Rome.) King Alfred, its hero, is fighting a losing war to save his kingdom from complete conquest by the Danes. As one would expect with Chesterton, it is a war of white against black, of Christianity against a diabolical paganism that has defeated Rome and is now trying to make all good men its slaves. … The enemy is not simply Danes, or barbarians in general, but a wholly malignant and almost irresistible force that stands behind all the enemies of Christianity: This power blights everything it touches — there are repeated references to its distorting effects even on the natural world — and the men who serve it become like Tolkien's Orcs. … To fight against this menace, Alfred, hiding in exile, summons three kindreds of free, Christian peoples as allies. Alfred himself, like Tolkien's Aragorn, is an idealized heroic figure who roams around in humble disguise and is sometimes mistreated by the ignorant. Instead of Dwarves, Elves, and Men of Numenorean descent, he leads an alliance of Saxons, Celts, and Romans.
 * In its fundamental conception, as well as in many of the significant details of its working out, Lord of the Rings is heavily indebted to G. K. Chesterton's now little read poem of 1911, The Ballad of the White Horse.
 * Cristopher Clausen, "The Lord of the Rings and The Ballad of the White Horse", in South Atlantic Bulletin 39.2 (May 1974)

 * Tolkien's Middle-earth gleams with the light of an ancient hope: peace between peoples, and with nature, and before the unknown.
 * Patrick Curry, Defending Middle-earth: Tolkien, Myth and Modernity (1997), p. 165

I

 * One workshop that was developed initially by one of our contributors, Morrigan Phillips, was “Science Fiction and Direct Action Organizing.” It takes existing science fiction worlds—like Hogwart's, like Oz, like Mordor —and has you pick the marginalized folks there and has you create an organizing goal, and has you develop direct action tactics to achieve that goal. It is the funnest workshop on the face of the planet or any other planet. You end up with flying monkeys in Oz demanding the right to return, because they've been taken from their homeland. And you end up with fighting Uruk-hai in Mordor rising up against their slave owners. You have the Elf Liberation Front, who starts creating political education courses magical creatures and squibs.
 * Walidah Imarisha Interview with Bitch Media

J

 * I wonder how could he have been able to invent all this stuff. It feels more like Tolkien discovered some sort of long-lost scrolls.
 * Peter Jackson Morning Edition, National Public Radio, 17 December 2001

 * Shortly after its publication, a reviewer for the Sunday Times said that "The English-speaking world is divided into those who have read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and those who are going to read them."
 * Sarah Crown, in The Lord of the Rings, The Guardian, (19 Dec 2001),

 * Oh, fuck, not another elf!
 * Hugo Dyson, Tolkien's friend and fellow academic, during a reading of The Lord of the Rings at a meeting of the Inklings; quoted in C.S. Lewis: A Biography (1990) by A. N. Wilson, p. 217
 * Variants:
 * And The Lord of the Rings would begin with Hugo lying on the couch, and lolling and shouting and saying, "Oh God, no more Elves."
 * Christopher Tolkien's account of readings of The Lord of the Rings in the television documentary A Film Portrait of J. R. R. Tolkien (1992)
 * On one memorable occasion a small group had gathered in Lewis's rooms and were listening to Tolkien read the last installment of The Lord of the Rings. They were sitting there puffing on pipes and sipping tea when Hugo Dyson, who had been lounging on a sofa and growing increasingly bored with the proceedings, suddenly exclaimed: "Oh, fuck! Not another elf!"
 * As quoted in C.S. Lewis: Creator of Narnia (2005) by Michael White, p. 152

 * Among the greatest works of imaginative fiction of the mid-20th century.
 * The Sunday Telegraph Press Release The Lord of the Rings... Houghton Miffilin books

 * There are very few works of genius in recent literature. This is one."
 * The Nation The Sunday Telegraph quoted in Press Release The Lord of the Rings

 * J.R.R. Tolkien's epic trilogy remains the ultimate quest, the ultimate battle between good and evil, the ultimate chronicle of stewardship of the earth. Endlessly imitated, it never has been surpassed.
 * John Mark Eberhart and Matthew Schofield, "After half a century, The Lord of the Rings towers over fantasy fiction — and now the films loom," The Kansas City Star, 1 October 2000: J1.

L

 * Such a book has of course its predestined readers, even now more numerous and more critical than is always realized. To them a reviewer need say little, except that here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron; here is a book that will break your heart.
 * C.S. Lewis, "The Gods Return to Earth", review in Time and Tide (14 August 1954), p. 1082

 * As we read we find ourselves sharing [the characters'] burden; when we have finished, we return to our own life not relaxed but fortified.
 * C.S. Lewis, "The Gods Return to Earth" (14 August 1954)

M

 * Western societies have been fortunate in the last decades; since the end of the Second World War they have not experienced war first-hand. True, Western countries have sent military to fight around the world, in Asia, in the Korean or Vietnam Wars or in Afghanistan, in parts of the Middle East or in Africa, but only a very small minority of people living in the West have been touched directly by those conflicts. Millions in those regions of course have had very different experiences and there has been no year since 1945 when there has not been fighting in one part of the world or another. For those of us who have enjoyed what is often called the Long Peace it is all too easy to see war as something that others do, perhaps because they are at a different stage of development. We in the West, so we complacently assume, are more peaceable. Writers such as the evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker have popularised the view that Western societies have become less violent over the past two centuries and that the world as a whole has seen a decline in deaths from war. So while we formally mourn the dead from our past wars once a year, we increasingly see war as something that happens when peace – the normal state of affairs – breaks down. At the same time we can indulge a fascination with great military heroes and their battles of the past; we admire stories of courage and daring exploits in war; the shelves of bookshops and libraries are packed with military histories; and movie and television producers know that war is always a popular subject. The public never seems to tire of Napoleon and his campaigns, Dunkirk, D-Day or the fantasies of Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings. We enjoy them in part because they are at a safe distance; we are confident that we ourselves will never have to take part in war.
 * Margaret MacMillan, War: How Conflict Shaped Us (2020)

 * I always felt like Gandalf should have stayed dead. That was such an incredible sequence in Fellowship of the Ring when he faces the Balrog on the Khazad-dûm and he falls into the gulf, and his last words are, “Fly, you fools.” What power that had, how that grabbed me. And then he comes back as Gandalf the White, and if anything he's sort of improved. I never liked Gandalf the White as much as Gandalf the Grey, and I never liked him coming back. I think it would have been an even stronger story if Tolkien had left him dead.
 * George R. R. Martin, interview on The Sound of Young America, September 2011.

R

 * [The Lord of the Rings] can be approached from many angles, but I have always considered it also as a gallery of characters, each facing life, death, and fate differently.
 * Marco Respinti, "Human and Humane Ecology: Where Tolkien Meets Tai Ji Men", Bitter Winter (June 2022)

 * There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
 * John Rogers, in one of his "Ephemera" posts, quoted in "I'm Ellsworth Toohey!" by Paul Krugman.

T

 * Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time. The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away. They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25.
 * Christopher Tolkien, Le Monde, as quoted in "Why JRR Tolkien’s Son Hates What Peter Jackson Has Done" by Devin Faraci, Birth.Movies.Death. (9 January 2013)

 * I should regard them [the Elves interested in technical devices] as no more wicked or foolish (but in much the same peril) as Catholics engaged in certain kinds of physical research (e.g. those producing, if only as by-products, poisonous gases and explosives): things not necessarily evil, but which, things being as they are, and the nature and motives of the economic masters who provide all the means for their work being as they are, are pretty certain to serve evil ends. For which they will not necessarily be to blame, even if aware of them.
 * [Lord of the Rings] is ... a piece of literature, ... and not real history. ... Its economics, science, artefacts, religion, and philosophy are defective, or at least sketchy.
 * [Tom Bombadil is] an exemplar, a particular embodying of pure (real) natural science: the spirit that desires knowledge of other things, their history and nature, because they are ‘other’ and wholly independent of the enquiring mind, a spirit coeval with the rational mind, and entirely unconcerned with ‘doing’ anything with the knowledge: Zoology and Botany not Cattle-breeding or Agriculture. Even the Elves hardly show this: they are primarily artists.
 * J. R. R. Tolkien; in a letter to Peter Hastings (Sep 1954); in Humphrey Carpenter (ed.) assisted by Christopher Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1995, 2014), 190, Letter No. 153.

 * My story [Lord of the Rings] is not an allegory of Atomic power, but of Power (exerted for Domination). Nuclear physics can be used for that purpose. But they need not be. They need not be used at all. If there is any contemporary reference in my story at all it is to what seems to me the most widespread assumption of our time: that if a thing can be done, it must be done. This seems to me wholly false.
 * J. R. R. Tolkien; in letter draft to Joanna de Bortadano (Apr 1956); in Humphrey Carpenter (ed.) assisted by Christopher Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1995, 2014), 246, Letter No. 186.

 * There was a time when the Hobbit fantasies of Professor Tolkien were being taken very seriously indeed by a great many distinguished literary figures. Mr. Auden is even reported to have claimed that these books were as good as War and Peace; Edwin Muir and many others were almost equally enthusiastic. I had a sense that one side or the other must be mad, for it seemed to me that these books were dull, ill-written, whimsical and childish. And for me this had a reassuring outcome, for most of his more ardent supporters were soon beginning to sell out their shares in Professor Tolkien, and today those books have passed into a merciful oblivion.
 * Philip Toynbee, "Dissension among the Judges", in The Observer (6 August 1961)

V

 * Written mainly between 1937 and 1949 (which places most of the writing during World War II), The Lord of the Rings did not become a best seller until the 1960s. Despite that late start, it can arguably be called the greatest work of fiction of the twentieth century. Its main theme is good versus evil, friendship, the importance of the individual, and reverence for nature are as relevant today, during the current campaign against terrorism, as when the book was written.
 * Without the challenge of the Dark Power, Frodo, Gandalf, and Galadriel would not have grown. We develop only by going against opposition and facing our shadow. All the characters who won... found their key to the path to the heart of the universe by looking inward, to the God within, which unlocks all mysteries.
 * Helene Vachet, The Lord of the Rings and the Journey to the Heart of the Universe, Quest magazine, (November - December 2002)

W

 * One is puzzled to know why the author should have supposed he was writing for adults. There are, to be sure, some details that are a little unpleasant for a children's book, but except when he is being pedantic and also boring the adult reader, there is little in The Lord of the Rings over the head of a seven-year-old child.
 * Edmund Wilson, Oo, THOSE AWFUL ORCS!, The Nation, April 14, 1956.

 * At the end of this long romance, I had still no conception of the wizard Gandalph, who is a cardinal figure, had never been able to visualize him at all. For the most part such characterizations as Dr. Tolkien is able to contrive are perfectly stereotyped: Frodo the good little Englishman, Samwise, his dog-like servant, who talks lower-class and respectful, and never deserts his master. These characters who are no characters are involved in interminable adventures the poverty of invention displayed in which is, it seems to me, almost pathetic.
 * Edmund Wilson, "Oo, THOSE AWFUL ORCS!", The Nation, April 14, 1956.

 * Once Sauron's realm is invaded, we think we are going to meet him; but he still remains nothing but a burning eye scrutinizing all that occurs from the window of a remote dark tower. This might, of course, be made effective; but actually it is not; we never feel Sauron's power. And the climax, to which we have been working up through exactly nine hundred and ninety-nine large close-printed pages, when it comes, proves extremely flat. The ring is at last got rid of by being dropped into a fiery crater, and the kingdom of Sauron « topples » in a brief and banal earthquake that sets fire to everything and burns it up, and so releases the author from the necessity of telling the reader what exactly was so terrible there.
 * Edmund Wilson, "Oo, THOSE AWFUL ORCS!", The Nation, April 14, 1956.

 * Now, how is it that these long-winded volumes of what looks to this reviewer like balderdash have elicited such tributes as those above? The answer is, I believe, that certain people – especially, perhaps, in Britain – have a lifelong appetite for juvenile trash.
 * Edmund Wilson, "Oo, THOSE AWFUL ORCS!", The Nation, April 14, 1956.

Related works

 * The Hobbit
 * The Silmarillion

title: The Lord of the Rings


text:
The Hobbit

 * For the movies, see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014).

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (1937) is a high fantasy novel by J. R. R. Tolkien about the quest of home-loving hobbit Bilbo Baggins, along with a band of dwarves, to win a share of the treasure guarded by the dragon, Smaug.

Chapter I: An Unexpected Party

 * In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

 * "Good morning!" said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.
 * "What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?"
 * "All of them at once," said Bilbo.

 * "I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it's very difficult to find anyone."
 * "I should think so—in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!"

 * Far over the misty mountains cold To dungeons deep and caverns old We must away ere break of day To seek the pale enchanted gold.

 * As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and a jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves.

 * The stars were out in a dark sky above the trees. He thought of the jewels of the dwarves shining in dark caverns. Suddenly in the wood beyond The Water a flame leapt up—probably somebody lighting a wood-fire—and he thought of plundering dragons settling on his quiet Hill and kindling it all to flames. He shuddered; and very quickly he was plain Mr. Baggins of Bag-End, Under-Hill, again.

 * "I should like to know about risks, out-of-pocket expenses, time required and remuneration, and so forth"—by which he meant: "What am I going to get out of it? and am I going to come back alive?"

 * Old Took's great-grand-uncle Bullroarer...was so huge (for a hobbit) that he could ride a horse. He charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of The Green Fields and knocked their king Golfimbul's head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit-hole, and in this way, the battle was won and the game of Golf invented at the same moment.

 * "There is a lot more in him than you guess, and a deal more than he has any idea of himself."

Chapter II: Roast Mutton

 * “If you had dusted the mantelpiece, you would have found this just under the clock,” said Gandalf, handing Bilbo a note (written, of course, on his own note-paper).
 * "Mutton yesterday, mutton today, and blimey, if it don't look like mutton again tomorrer," said one of the trolls.
 * Trolls are slow in the uptake, and mighty suspicious about anything new to them.
 * "Who shall we sit on first?" said the voice.

Chapter III: A Short Rest

 * ...but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to.

Chapter IV: Over Hill and Under Hill

 * You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.

Chapter V: Riddles in the Dark

 * He guessed as well as he could, and crawled along for a good way, till suddenly his hand met what felt like a tiny ring of cold metal lying on the floor of the tunnel. It was a turning point in his career, but he did not know it. He put the ring in his pocket almost without thinking; certainly it did not seem of any particular use at the moment.

 * ''What has roots as nobody sees, Is taller than trees, Up, up it goes, And yet never grows?
 * One of Gollum's riddles for Bilbo. The answer is "mountain".

 * Thirty white horses on a red hill, First they champ, Then they stamp, Then they stand still.
 * One of Bilbo's riddles for Gollum. The answer is "teeth".

 * Voiceless it cries, Wingless flutters, toothless bites, Mouthless mutters.
 * One of Gollum's riddles for Bilbo. The answer is "wind".

 * An eye in a blue face Saw an eye in a green face. "That eye is like to this eye" Said the first eye, "but in low place Not in high place."
 * One of Bilbo's riddles for Gollum. The answer is "sun on the daisies".

 * It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt. It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills. It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.
 * One of Gollum's riddles for Bilbo. The answer is "dark".

 * A box without hinges, key, or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid.
 * One of Bilbo's riddles for Gollum. The answer is "egg".

 * Alive without breath, As cold as death; Never thirsty, ever drinking, All in mail never clinking.
 * One of Gollum's riddles for Bilbo. The answer is "fish".

 * No-legs lay on one-leg, two-legs sat near on three-legs, four-legs got some.
 * One of Bilbo's riddles for Gollum. The answer is "fish on a little table, man at table sitting on a stool, the cat has the bones".

 * This thing all things devours: Birds, beasts, trees, flowers; Gnaws iron, bites steel; Grinds hard stones to meal; Slays king, ruins town, And beats high mountain down.
 * One of Gollum's riddles for Bilbo. The answer is "time".
 * Bilbo pinched himself and slapped himself; he gripped on his little sword; he even felt in his pocket with his other hand. There he found the ring he had picked up in the passage and forgotten about.
 * "What have I got in my pocket?" he said aloud.

 * “Where iss it? Where iss it?” Bilbo heard him crying. “Losst it is, my precious, lost, lost! Curse us and crush us, my precious is lost!”

 * "Thief, thief, thief! Baggins! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it for ever!"

Chapter XII: Inside Information

 * There it is: dwarves are not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not, but are decent enough people like Thorin and Company, if you don't expect too much.

 * It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him. Dragons may not have much real use for all their wealth, but they know it to an ounce as a rule, especially after long possession; and Smaug was no exception.

 * To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all. There are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.

 * 'I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led. And through the air. I am he that walks unseen. I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen for the lucky number. I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water. I came from the end of a bag, but no bag went over me. I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider.'

 * This 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 trying to understand it.

 * "The King under the Mountain is dead, and where are his kin that dare seek revenge? Girion Lord of Dale is dead, and I have eaten his people like a wolf among sheep, and where are his sons’ sons that dare approach me? I kill where I wish, and none dare resist. I laid low the warriors of old and their like is not in the world today. Then I was but young and tender. Now I am old and strong, strong, strong, Thief in the Shadows!" he gloated. "My armour is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!"

 * "Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!" he said to himself, and it became a favourite saying of his later, and passed into a proverb.

 * "Shut the door!" he begged them, "I fear that dragon in my marrow. I like this silence far less than the uproar of last night. Shut the door before it is too late!" Something in his voice gave the dwarves an uncomfortable feeling. Slowly, Thorin shook off his dreams and getting up he kicked away the stone that wedged the door. Then they thrust upon it, and it closed with a snap and a clang. No trace of a keyhole was there left on the inside. They were shut in the Mountain!

 * "Barrel-rider!", he snorted. "Your feet came from the waterside and up the water you came without a doubt. I don’t know your smell, but if you are not one of those men of the Lake, you had their help. They shall see me and remember who is the real King under the Mountain!" He rose in fire and went away south towards the Running River.

Chapter XIII: Not at Home

 * The mere fleeting glimpses of treasure which they had caught as they went along had rekindled all the fire of their dwarvish hearts; and when the heart of a dwarf, even the most respectable, is wakened by gold and by jewels, he grows suddenly bold, and he may become fierce.

Chapter XV: The Gathering of the Clouds

 * The king is come unto his hall Under the Mountain dark and tall. The Worm of Dread is slain and dead, And ever so our foes shall fall!

Chapter XVI: A Thief in the Night

 * The Elvenking looked at Bilbo with a new wonder. "Bilbo Baggins!" he said. "You are more worthy to wear the armour of elf-princes than many that have looked more comely in it."

Chapter XVII: The Clouds Burst

 * "The Eagles!" cried Bilbo once more, but at that moment a stone hurtling from above smote heavily on his helm, and he fell with a crash and knew no more.

Chapter XVIII: The Return Journey

 * 'Victory after all, I suppose! Well, it seems a very gloomy business.'

 * "Farewell, good thief," he said. "I go now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers, until the world is renewed. Since I leave now all gold and silver, and go where it is of little worth, I wish to part in friendship from you, and I would take back my words and deeds at the Gate."

 * "There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. But sad or merry, I must leave it now. Farewell!"

Chapter XIX: The Last Stage

 * As all things come to an end, even this story, a day came at last when they were in sight of the country where Bilbo had been born and bred, where the shapes of the land and of the trees were as well known to him as his hands and toes.

 * Eyes that fire and sword have seen And horror in the halls of stone Look at last on meadows green And trees and hills they long have known.

 * He took to writing poetry and visiting the elves; and though many shook their heads and touched their foreheads and said "Poor old Baggins!" and though few believed any of his tales, he remained very happy to the end of his days, and those were extraordinarily long.

"Of course!" said Gandalf. "And why should not they prove true? Surely you don't disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!" "Thank goodness!" said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar.
 * "Then the prophecies of the old songs have turned out to be true, after a fashion!" said Bilbo.

Quotes about The Hobbit

 * Seventeen years ago there appeared, without any fanfare, a book called "The Hobbit" which, in my opinion, is one of the best children's stories of this century.
 * W. H. Auden, "The Hero Is a Hobbit", in The New York Times Book Review (31 October 1954)

 * I am personally immensely amused by hobbits as such, and can contemplate them eating and making their rather fatuous remarks indefinitely; but I find that is not the case with even my most devoted ‘fans’.
 * J. R. R. Tolkien, commenting upon the likelihood of a sequel to The Hobbit, in a letter to C. A. Furth of Allen and Unwin, 24th July 1938. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter, Allan and Unwin (1981), p. 38

 * I never expected a money success. In fact, I never even thought of commercial publication when I wrote The Hobbit back in the Thirties. It all began when I was reading exam papers to earn a bit of extra money. That was agony. One of the tragedies of the underpaid professor is that he has to do menial jobs. He is expected to maintain a certain position and to send his children to good schools. Well, one day I came to a blank page in an exam book and I scribbled on it. 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.' I knew no more about the creatures than that, and it was years before his story grew. I don't know where the word came from. You can't catch your mind out. It might have been associated with Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt. Certainly not rabbit, as some people think. Babbitt has the same bourgeois smugness that hobbits do. His world is the same limited place.
 * J. R. R. Tolkien, The Telegraph interview, originally published on 22 March 1968.

Related works

 * The Lord of the Rings

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title: The Hobbit