I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size). I likegardens, 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.

I speak no comfort to you, for there is no comfort for such pain within the circles of the world. The uttermost choice is before you: to repent and go to the Havens and bear away into the West the memory of our days together that shall there be evergreen but never more than memory; or else to abide the Doom of Men.

“The realm of Sauron is ended!” said Gandalf.

[ Sam Gamgee speaking :] “Well, I’m back,” he said.

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

The Road goes ever on and on

[ Gollum speaking of the Ring :] Where iss it? Where iss it? . . . Losst it is, my precious, lost, lost! Curse us and crush us, my precious is lost!

Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make abody of more or less connected legend, rangingfrom the large and cosmogonic, to the level ofromantic fairy-story—the larger founded onthe lesser in contact with the earth, the lesserdrawing splendor from the vast backcloths—which I could dedicate simply to: to England; tomy country.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Nota nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down onor to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

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