tolkien

Both [Satan and Melkor/Morgoth] are loud in their defiance, claiming that they would "rather rule in hell than serve in heaven". One might have admired these rebel angels if one believed their defiance was in the name of liberty- however, both lied. Their rebellions were only provoked by envy and the usurpers' wishes to take the perceived tyrants' place. Never were two more natural tyrants than Morgoth and Satan.

All that is gold does not glitter,Not all those who wander are lost.

You know you've written a good book when even the people who hate it admit it's entertaining.

But Ilúvatar knew that Men, being set amid the turmoils of the powers of the world, would stray often, and would not use their gifts in harmony; and he said: 'These too in their time shall find that all that they do redounds at the end only to the glory of my work.

Don't trust your head, Samwise, it is not the best part of you.

He is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each day's madness here in a poisoned world. We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers - thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.

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.

Though mortal Men have little life beside the span of the Elves, they would rather spend it in battle than fly or submit. The defiance of Húrin Thalion is a great deed; and though Morgoth slay the doer he cannot make the deed not to have been. Even the Lords of the West will honour it; and is it not written into the history of Arda, which neither Morgoth nor Manwë can unwrite?

Grief is a hone to a hard mind.

Heaven is not a republic.

Is there any pleasure on earth as great as the circle of Christian friends by a good fire?

The world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.

How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep.

The key to having good scales is a healthy diet of venison when you__e just a wee dragon lad.

The love of Arda was set in your hearts by Ilúvatar, and he does not plant to no purpose.

All that is gold does not glitter,Not all those who wander are lost;The old that is strong does not wither,Deep roots are not reached by the frost.J.R.R. Tolkien

But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while they still endure for eyes to see, are ever their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken for ever do they pass into song.

His rage passes description - the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted.