Follow what may, great deeds are not lessened in worth.
Now at this last we must take a hard road, a road unforeseen. There lies our hope, if hope it be. To walk into peril – to Mordor. We must send the Ring to the Fire.
Frodo heard a sweet singing running in his mind: a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to glass and silver, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise.
Saruman,” I said, standing away from him, “only one hand at a time can weild the One, and you know that well, so do not trouble to say we!
The world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.
Is everything sad going to come untrue?
Do you remember when we first met? I thought I had wandered into a dream.
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. I am glad that I know about them, a little.
There are many things in the deep waters; and seas and lands may change. And it is not our part here to take thought only for a season, or for a few lives of Men, or for a passing age of the world. We should seek a final end of this menace, even if we do not hope to make one.
A King will have his way in his own hall, be it folly or wisdom.
If that’s being queer, then we could do with a bit more queerness in these parts.
But there, my friends, songs like trees bear fruit only in their own time and their own way: and sometimes they are withered untimely.
Of course, it is likely enough, my friends,” he said slowly, “likely enough that we are going to our dooms: the last march of the Ents. But if we stayed at home and did nothing, doom would find us anyway, sooner or later.
The great storm is coming, but the tide has turned.
He raised his staff. There was a roll of thunder. The sunlight was blotted out from the eastern windows; the whole hall became suddenly dark as night. The fire faded to sullen embers. Only Gandalf could be seen, standing white and tall before the blackened hearth.
What d’you want to go and find a dragon for, at this time of year, and me with my hands full?
As he fell slowly into sleep, Pippin had a strange feeling: he and Gandalf were still as stone, seated upon the statue of a running horse, while the world rolled away beneath his feet with a great noise of wind.
Perhaps it is better not to tell what you wish. if you cannot have it.
The Light failed; but the Darkness that followed was more than loss of light.
So most men teach, and few men learn.