Tolkien Quotes

J.R.R. Tolkien, or John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, is a widely celebrated English writer, poet, and university professor. He is the brilliant mind behind the literary classics The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Because of his imagination, we came to know characters such as Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, Gollum, Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, Merry, Pippin, and Samwise Gamgee.

If you are a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, you will surely enjoy reading some of his famous quotes that he said during the course of his personal life and writing career. Most of the quotes that we have included here in QuoteReel.com are from his letters and critiques.

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There was a solemn article in the local paper seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are rattlesnakes, and don’t know the difference between good and evil! (What of the writer?) The Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done.

I wish life was not so short. Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.

Well, the first War of the Machines seems to be drawing to its final inconclusive chapter — leaving, alas, everyone the poorer, many bereaved or maimed and millions dead, and only one thing triumphant: the Machines. As the servants of the Machine are becoming a privileged class, the Machines are going to be enormously more powerful. What’s their next move?

I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighbourhood, intruding into my relatively safe world, in which it was, for instance, possible to read stories in peace of mind, free from fear. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril.

1538

[On Leaf by Niggle] That story was the only thing I have ever done which cost me absolutely no pains at all. Usually I compose only with great difficulty and endless rewriting. I woke up one day (more than 2 years ago) with that odd thing virtually complete in my head. It took only a few hours to get down, and then copy out.

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which ‘Escape’ is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it.

You can make the Ring an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that awaits all attempts to defeat evil power by power. But that is only because all power magical or mechanical does always so work.

And lastly there is the oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape from Death. Fairy-stories provide many examples and modes of this … Fairy-stories are made by men not by fairies. The Human-stories of the elves are doubtless full of the Escape from Deathlessness.

I should say that, in addition to my tree-love (it was originally called The Tree), it arose from my own pre-occupation with the Lord of the Rings, the knowledge that it would be finished in great detail or not at all, and the fear (near certainty) that it would be ‘not at all’. The war had arisen to darken all horizons. But no such analyses are a complete explanation even of a short story…

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.

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.

As for what you say or hint of ‘local’ conditions: I knew of them. I don’t think they have much changed (even for the worse). I used to hear them discussed by my mother; and have ever since taken a special interest in that part of the world. The treatment of colour nearly always horrifies anyone going out from Britain, & not only in South Africa. Unfortunately, not many retain that generous sentiment for long.

I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones…

Nothing has astonished me more (and I think my publishers) than the welcome given to The Lord of the Rings. But it is, of course, a constant source of consolation and pleasure to me. And, I may say, a piece of singular good fortune, much envied by some of my contemporaries. Wonderful people still buy the book, and to a man ‘retired’ that is both grateful and comforting.

Every morning I wake up and think good, another 24 hours’ pipe-smoking.

The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. … But this story has entered History and the primary world; … It has pre-eminently the “inner consistency of reality.” There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. …this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men — and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.

If you really come down to any large story that interests people – holds the attention for a considerable time … human stories are practically always about one thing, aren’t they? Death. The inevitability of death.

Wars are not favourable to delicate pleasures.

It gives me great pleasure, a good name. I always in writing start with a name. Give me a name and it produces a story, not the other way about normally.

Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to.

I do so dearly believe that no half-heartedness and no worldly fear must turn us aside from following the light unflinchingly.

Are you a fan of J. R. R. Tolkien? You will certainly love reading these quotes taken from his letters, interviews, and critiques. There is a wisdom in all of his quotes we know you will truly appreciate.

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