J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes

The right word fitly spoken is a precious rarity.

Silence is better than unmeaning words.

Thought itself needs words. It runs on them like a long wire. And if it loses the habit of words, little by little it becomes shapeless, somber.

Say something worth the words.

Language is our way of communicating what we want and who we are. By using bad language, we diminish the divine spark within us that defines our humanity.

The page is long, blank, and full of truth. When I am through with it, it shall probably be long, full, and empty with words.

The living tongue that tells the word, the living ear that hears it, bind and bond us in the communion we long for in the silence of our inner solitude.

For when all else is done, on­ly words re­main. Words en­dure.

If we had no language we'd have nothing.

Speech is but the incorporation of thought.

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

...words are some of the most powerful and important things I know....Language is the tool of love and the weapon of hatred. It's the bright red warning flag of danger--and the stone foundation of diplomacy and peace.

Teach your child to hold his tongue; he'll learn fast enough to speak.

For me, language is a freedom. As soon as you have found the words with which to express something, you are no longer incoherent, you are no longer trapped by your own emotions, by your own experiences; you can describe them, you can tell them, you can bring them out of yourself and give them to somebody else. That is an enormously liberating experience.

A letter is never ill-timed; it never interrupts. Instead it waits for us to find the opportune minute, the quiet moment to savor the message. There is an element of timelessness about letter writing.

Words are the counters of wise men, but the money of fools.

Fie on the eloquence that leaves us craving itself, not things!

Don't long for the unripe grape.

Sometimes it takes you awhile to get to it, but you always get there, and what you say is always worth waiting for.

Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound, Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found.

I went with my very being toward language.

What's the secret to such a long and happy relationship? I don't know. Maybe because I work a lot.

An instrument that sometimes expresses thought, sometimes obscures thought, but most often replaces thought.

We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.

She tore a page from the book and ripped it in half. Then a chapter. Soon, there was nothing but scraps of words littered between her legs and all around her. The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this. Without words, the Führer was nothing. There would be no limping prisoners, no need for consolation or wordly tricks to make us feel better. What good were the words? She said it audibly now, to the orange-lit room. "What good are the words?