John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE FRSL was an English writer, poet, philologist, and academic, who authored the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. Profoundly inspirational J.R.R Tolkien quotes will make you look at life differently and help you live a meaningful life.
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Famous J.R.R Tolkien Quotes
We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human, is still soaked with the sense of exile. – J.R.R Tolkien
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, Seven for the Dwarf-lords in halls of stone, Nine for Mortal Men, doomed to die, One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. – J.R.R Tolkien
The most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity. – J.R.R Tolkien
The future, good or ill, was not forgotten, but ceased to have any power over the present. Health and hope grew strong in them, and they were content with each good day as it came, taking pleasure in every meal, and in every word and song. – J.R.R Tolkien
Elen sila lumenn’ omentielvo, a star shines on the hour of our meeting. – J.R.R Tolkien
Many folk like to know beforehand what is to be set on the table; but those who have laboured to prepare the feast like to keep their secret; for wonder makes the words of praise louder. – J.R.R Tolkien
There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark. – J.R.R Tolkien
Farewell, and may the blessing of Elves and Men and all Free Folk go with you. May the stars shine upon your faces! – J.R.R Tolkien
In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory. – J.R.R Tolkien
Life is rather above the measure of us all (save for a very few perhaps). We all need literature that is above our measure–though we may not have sufficient energy for it all the time. – J.R.R Tolkien
Far more often [than asking the question ‘Is it true?’] they [children] have asked me: ‘Was he good? Was he wicked?’ That is, they were far more concerned to get the Right side and the Wrong side clear. For that is a question equally important in History and in Faerie. – J.R.R Tolkien
I am not a ‘democrat’ only because ‘humility’ and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the attempt to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of power–and then we get and are getting slavery. – J.R.R Tolkien
A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities. – J.R.R Tolkien
Pippin: I didn’t think it would end this way. Gandalf: End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path… One that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass… And then you see it. Pippin: What? Gandalf?… See what? Gandalf: White shores… and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise. Pippin: Well, that isn’t so bad. Gandalf: No… No it isn’t. – J.R.R Tolkien
Haldir had gone on and was now climbing to the high flet. As Frodo prepared to follow him, he laid his hand upon the tree beside the ladder: never before had he been so suddenly and so keenly aware of the feel and texture of a tree’s skin and of the life within it. He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself. – J.R.R Tolkien
The chief purpose of life, for any of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. – J.R.R Tolkien
You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: and allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power. – J.R.R Tolkien
It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. – J.R.R Tolkien
The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water. If it could do the one, it could do the other; it inevitably did both. When we can take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter’s power. – J.R.R Tolkien
Yes, I am here. And you are lucky to be here too after all the absurd things you’ve done since you left home. – J.R.R Tolkien
I wish it need not have happened in my time, said Frodo. So, do I, said Gandalf, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. – J.R.R Tolkien
The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them. – J.R.R Tolkien
It simply isn’t an adventure worth telling if there aren’t any dragons. – J.R.R Tolkien
If you’re going to have a complicated story you must work to a map; otherwise, you’ll never make a map of it afterwards. – J.R.R Tolkien
The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater. – J.R.R Tolkien
But I am the real Strider, fortunately. I am Aragorn son of Arathorn; and if by life or death I can save you, I will. – J.R.R Tolkien
One felt as if there was an enormous well behind them. Filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface was sparkling with the present: like sun shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree, or on the ripples of a very deep lake. I don’t know, but I t felt as if something that grew in the ground—asleep, you might say, or just feeling itself as something between roof-tip and leaf-tip, between deep earth and sky had suddenly waked up, and was considering you with the same slow care that it had given to its own inside affairs for endless years. – J.R.R Tolkien
For you do not yet know the strengths of your hearts, and you cannot foresee what each may meet on the road. – J.R.R Tolkien
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. – J.R.R Tolkien
The treacherous are ever distrustful. – J.R.R Tolkien
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed of dragons, ’twas our right (used or misused). The right has not decayed. We make still by the law in which we’re made. – J.R.R Tolkien
Do not spoil the wonder with haste! – J.R.R Tolkien
Oft hope is born when all is forlorn. – J.R.R Tolkien
Deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised. – J.R.R Tolkien
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. – J.R.R Tolkien
True courage is about knowing not when to take a life, but when to spare one. – J.R.R Tolkien
I am in fact a Hobbit in all but size. I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humor (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much. – J.R.R Tolkien
Such is of the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere. – J.R.R Tolkien
Justice is not Healing. Healing cometh only by suffering and patience, and maketh no demand, not even for Justice. Justice worketh only within the bonds of things as they are… and therefore though Justice is itself good and desireth no further evil, it can but perpetuate the evil that was, and doth not prevent it from the bearing of fruit in sorrow. – J.R.R Tolkien
The road goes ever on and on – J.R.R Tolkien
A story must be told or there’ll be no story, yet it is the untold stories that are most moving. – J.R.R Tolkien
How do you move on? You move on when your heart finally understands that there is no turning back. – J.R.R Tolkien
Pay heed to the tales of old wives. It may well be that they alone keep in memory what it was once needful for the wise to know. – J.R.R Tolkien
Deep roots are not reached by the frost. – J.R.R Tolkien
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! – J.R.R Tolkien
Leave him! I said. I never mean to. I am going with him, if he climbs to the Moon; and if any of these Black Riders try to stop him, they’ll have Sam Gamgee to reckon with, I said. They laughed. – J.R.R Tolkien
The enemy? His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is, where he came from. And if he was really evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home. If he would not rather have stayed there in peace. War will make corpses of us all. – J.R.R Tolkien
We are being at once wisely aware of our own frivolity if we avoid hitting and whacking and prefer ‘striking’ and ‘smiting’; talk and chat and prefer ‘speech’ and ‘discourse’; well-bred, brilliant, or polite noblemen (visions of snobbery columns in the Press, and fat men on the Riviera) and prefer the ‘worthy, brave and courteous men’ of long ago. – J.R.R Tolkien
Frodo: Go back, Sam! I’m going to Mordor alone. Sam: Of course you are, and I’m coming with you! – J.R.R Tolkien
May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out. – J.R.R Tolkien
All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king. – J.R.R Tolkien
I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew. – J.R.R Tolkien
Above all shadows rides the sun. – J.R.R Tolkien
The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation – This story begins and ends in joy. – J.R.R Tolkien
It was at this point that Bilbo stopped. Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterward were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait. – J.R.R Tolkien
The burned hand teaches best. – J.R.R Tolkien
Even the smallest person can change the course of the future. – J.R.R Tolkien
Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. – J.R.R Tolkien
All my own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded. – J.R.R Tolkien
It is no bad thing celebrating a simple life. – J.R.R Tolkien
I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen, of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been; Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were, with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair. – J.R.R Tolkien
Short cuts make long delays. – J.R.R Tolkien
There are no safe paths in this part of the world. Remember you are over the Edge of the Wild now, and in for all sorts of fun wherever you go. – J.R.R Tolkien
Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape? – J.R.R Tolkien
Living by faith includes the call to something greater than cowardly self-preservation. – J.R.R Tolkien
The news today about ‘Atomic bombs’ is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men’s hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope ‘this will ensure peace’. But one good thing may arise out of it, I suppose, if the write-ups are not overheated: Japan ought to cave in. Well we’re in God’s hands. But He does not look kindly on Babel-builders. – J.R.R Tolkien
There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. – J.R.R Tolkien
History often resembles myth, because they are both ultimately of the same stuff. – J.R.R Tolkien
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. – J.R.R Tolkien
There is a place called ‘heaven’ where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued. We may laugh together yet. – J.R.R Tolkien
It is not the strength of the body that counts, but the strength of the spirit. – J.R.R Tolkien
The Resurrection was the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the greatest Fairy Story — and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love. – J.R.R Tolkien
No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself. – J.R.R Tolkien
Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth. – J.R.R Tolkien
You can only come to the morning through the shadows. – J.R.R Tolkien
No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of wasting time trying to understand it. – J.R.R Tolkien
Go back? he thought. No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go! So up he got, and trotted along with his little sword held in front of him and one hand feeling the wall, and his heart all of a patter and a pitter. – J.R.R Tolkien
I will not say, do not weep, for not all tears are an evil. – J.R.R Tolkien
It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish. – J.R.R Tolkien
Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate. – J.R.R Tolkien
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. – J.R.R Tolkien
Courage is found in unlikely places. – J.R.R Tolkien
Home is now behind you, the world is ahead! – J.R.R Tolkien
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? – J.R.R Tolkien
The birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus means that one day everything sad will come untrue. – J.R.R Tolkien
After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of ‘truth’, and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear. – J.R.R Tolkien
But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them. – J.R.R Tolkien
Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick. – J.R.R Tolkien
I look East, West, North, South, and I do not see Sauron; but I see that Saruman has many descendants. We Hobbits have against them no magic weapons. Yet, my gentlehobbits, I give you this toast: To the Hobbits. May they outlast the Sarumans and see spring again in the trees. – J.R.R Tolkien
We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming ‘sub-creator’ and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic ‘progress’ leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil. – J.R.R Tolkien
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. – J.R.R Tolkien
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom. – J.R.R Tolkien
If you do not believe in a personal God, the question: ‘What is the purpose of life?’ is unaskable and unanswerable. – J.R.R Tolkien
I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to – J.R.R Tolkien
I am dreading the publication, for it will be impossible not to mind what is said. I have exposed my heart to be shot at. – J.R.R Tolkien
You have to understand the good in things, to detect the real evil. – J.R.R Tolkien
Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on on the story. – J.R.R Tolkien
Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight?’ A man may do both,’ said Aragorn. ‘For not we but those who come after will make the legends of our time. The green earth, say you? That is a mighty matter of legend, though you tread it under the light of day! – J.R.R Tolkien
