“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.”

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

“...as young and as ancient as Spring....”

“...and all the stars flowered in the sky.”

“What do you fear, lady?" [Aragorn] asked. "A cage," [owyn] said. "To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.”

“A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.”

“I will take the Ring", he said, "though I do not know the way.”

“A great dread fell on him, as if he was awaiting the pronouncement of some doom that he had long foreseen and vainly hoped might after all never be spoken. An overwhelming longing to rest and remai...”

“Then holding the star aloft and the bright sword advanced, Frodo, hobbit of the Shire, walked steadily down to meet the eyes.”

“No parent should have to bury their child.”

“And there's no sex, hardly any love stuff at all, in Middle Earth, which always made me think, yes, the world would be better off without it.”

“...With a religious book it is less what we see in it than what we see through it that matters. J. R. R. Tolkien's fairy-tale epic the Lord of the Rings helps draw the distinction perhaps. Some of ...”

“I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he w...”