It's been a banner year for mushrooms and conditions were ripe for a fungi photo safari at Houghton Falls. Time flew as I spent my morning on my hands and knees amongst the inhabitants of the forest floor. It's good for the soul to spend a few hours bathed in wonderment—it's as easy as looking down.
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a 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 on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
A safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
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.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world; small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
There are no safe paths in this part of the world. Remember you are over the Edge of the Wild now, and in for all sorts of fun wherever you go.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. 'It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,' he used to say. 'You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
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.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
