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Truly songs and tales fall utterly short of the reality, O Smaug the Chiefest and greatest of Calamities.

J. R. R. Tolkien

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J. R. R. Tolkien
Age: 81 †
Born: 1892
Born: January 3
Died: 1973
Died: September 2
Author
Essayist
Historian
Illustrator
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Literary Critic
Military Officer
Poet
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John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
John R. R. Tolkien
J-R-R Tolkien
Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
Short
Truly
Greatest
Chiefest
Song
Calamities
Fall
Calamity
Reality
Utterly
Tales
Songs

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Very potent influence on myself has been Finnish.
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Deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.
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For even the very wise cannot see all ends.
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False hopes are more dangerous than fears.
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After some time he felt for his pipe. It was not broken, and that was something. Then he felt for his pouch, and there was some tobacco in it, and that was something more. Then he felt for matches and he could not find any at all, and that shattered his hopes completely.
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Don't the great tales never end? No, they never end as tales, said Frodo. But the people in them come, and go when their part's ended. Our part will end later – or sooner.
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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.
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A story must be told or there'll be no story, yet it is the untold stories that are most moving.
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The strongest must seek a way, say you? But I say: let a ploughman plough, but choose an otter for swimming, and for running light over grass and leaf, or over snow- an Elf!
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Rover did not know in the least where the moon's path led to, and at present he was much too frightened and excited to ask, and anyway he was beginning to get used to extraordinary things happening to him.
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But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?
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Let him go, you filth! Let him go! You will not touch him again!
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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).
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The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.
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Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo, a star shines on the hour of our meeting.
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And there was Frodo, pale and worn, and yet himself again and in his eyes there was peace now, neither strain of will, nor madness, nor any fear. His burden was taken away.
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Here ends the SILMARILLION. If it has passed from the high and the beautiful to darkness and ruin, that was of old the fate of Arda Marred and if any change shall come and the Marring be amended, Manwë and Varda may know but they have not revealed it, and it is not declared in the dooms of Mandos.
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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.
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Thank you, Sam, he said in a cracked whisper. How far is there to go? I don't know, said Sam, because I don't know where we're going.
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Farewell we call to hearth and hall! Though wind may blow and rain may fall. We must away ere the break of day. Far over wood and mountain tall.
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