J. R. R. Tolkien

“It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish.”

“May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.”

“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...”

“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”

“Still round the corner there may wait, a new road, or a secret gate.”

“Roads Go Ever On Roads 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 flow...”

“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.”

“End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path. One that we all must take.”

“Journey’s end In western lands beneath the Sun The flowers may rise in Spring, The trees may bud, the waters run, The merry finches sing. Or there maybe 'tis cloudless night, And swaying bra...”

“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.”

“Ónen i-estel edain, ú-chebin estel anim. (I gave Hope to the Dúnedain, I have kept none for myself.) (Gilraen's linnod)”

“There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark.”

“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 forsake...”

“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 theor...”

“But in the end it's only a passing thing, this shadow; even darkness must pass.”

“I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to”

“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...”

“Fair speech may hide a foul heart.”

“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.”