It is a long tale. Then you had better come inside and tell me some of it, if it won’t take all day.

Sorry! I don’t want any adventures, thank you. Not today. Good morning! But please come to tea—any time you like! Why not tomorrow? Come tomorrow! Good bye!

Thorin, of course, was really the grandson of the King under the Mountain, and there is no knowing what a dwarf will not dare and do for revenge or the recovery of his own.

Gandalf looked at him. My dear Bilbo! he said. Something is the matter with you! You are not the hobbit that you were.

Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.

This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected.

The enemy is strong beyond our reckoning, yet we have a hope at which he has not guessed.

Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

He rose and standing in the dark he began to chant in a deep voice, while the echoes ran away into the roof. The world was young, the mountains green, No stain yet on the Moon was seen, No words were laid on stream or stone When Durin woke and walked alone. He named the nameless hills and dells; He drank from yet untasted wells; He stooped and looked in Mirrormere, And saw a crown of stars appear, As gems upon a silver thread, Above the shadow of his head. The world was fair, the mountains tall, In Elder Days before the fall Of mighty kings in Nargothrond And Gondolin, who now beyond The Western Seas have passed away: The world was fair in Durin’s Day. A king he was on carven throne In many-pillared halls of stone With golden roof and silver floor, And runes of power upon the door. The light of sun and star and moon In shining lamps of crystal hewn Undimmed by cloud or shade of night There shone for ever fair and bright. There hammer on the anvil smote, There chisel clove, and graver wrote; There forged was blade, and bound was hilt; The delver mined, the mason built. There beryl, pearl, and opal pale, And metal wrought like fishes’ mail, Buckler and corslet, axe and sword, And shining spears were laid in hoard. Unwearied then were Durin’s folk; Beneath the mountains music woke: The harpers harped, the minstrels sang, And at the gates the trumpets rang. The world is grey, the mountains old, The forge’s fire is ashen-cold; No harp is wrung, no hammer falls: The darkness dwells in Durin’s halls; The shadow lies upon his tomb In Moria, in Khazad-dûm. But still the sunken stars appear In dark and windless Mirrormere; There lies his crown in water deep, Till Durin wakes again from sleep.

What shall we do, what shall we do! Escaping goblins to be caught by wolves is like out of the frying pan and into the fire!