"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
"I sit beside the fire and think Of all that I have seenOf meadow flowers and butterfliesIn summers that have beenOf yellow leaves and gossamerIn autumns that there wereWith morning mist and silver sun..."
"Roads Go Ever OnRoads go ever ever on,Over rock and under tree,By caves where never sun has shone,By streams that never find the sea;Over snow by winter sown,And through the merry flowers of June,Over..."
"Your time may come. Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot be always torn in two. You will have to be one and whole, for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be, and to do."
"Journey’s endIn western lands beneath the SunThe flowers may rise in Spring,The trees may bud, the waters run,The merry finches sing.Or there maybe 'tis cloudless night,And swaying branches bearThe El..."
"End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path. One that we all must take."
"For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
"The treacherous are ever distrustful."
"There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, an..."
"Criticism - however valid or intellectually engaging - tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require practice, but if he starts a theory of equil..."