You ought not to be rude to an eagle, when you are only the size of a hobbit, and are up in hid eyrie at night!
Farewell! wherever you fare, till your eyries receive you at the journey’s end!
Farewell! O Gandalf! May you ever appear where you are most needed and least expected!
Lazy Lob and crazy Cob are weaving webs to wind me. I am far more sweet than other meat, but still they cannot find me! Here am I, naughty little fly; you are fat and lazy. You cannot trap me, though you try, in your cobwebs crazy.
They were frightfully angry. Quite apart from the stones no spider has ever liked being called Attercop, and Tomnoddy of course is insulting to anybody.
Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks, and the setting sun with the last light of Durin’s Day will shine upon the key-hole.
O! Where are you going With beards all a-wagging? No knowing, no knowing What brings Mister Baggins, And Balin and Dwalin down into the valley in June ha! ha!
Tomorrow we may come this way, And take the hidden paths that run Towards the Moon or to the Sun.
A red sun rises. Blood has been spilled this night.
I don’t know, and I would rather not guess.
Not idly do the leaves of Lorien fall.
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.
And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City.
And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world.
Gandalf, dwarves and Mr. Baggins! We are met together in the house of our friend and fellow conspirator, this most excellent and audacious hobbit – may the hair on his toes never fall out!
I give you this toast: To the Hobbits. May they outlast the Sarumans and see spring again in the trees.
It is wisdom to recognize necessity when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope.
Nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is true.
And its object is Art not power, sub-creation not domination and tyrannous re-forming of Creation.
Your lullaby would waken a drunken goblin!