’What?’ shouted Tom Bombadil, leaping up in the air. 'Old Man Willow? Naught worse than that, eh? That can soon be mended. I know the tune for him. Old grey Willow-man! I’ll freeze his marrow cold, if he don’t behave himself. I’ll sing his roots off. I’ll sing a wind up and blow leaf and branch away. Old Man Willow!

After some while Bilbo became impatient. "Well, what is it?" he said. "The answer's not a kettle boiling over, as you seem to think by the noise you are making.

On the contrary! No, the burned hand teaches best. After that advice about fire goes to the heart.

I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago, and people who will see a world that I shall never know. But all the while I sit and think of times there were before, I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.

Then coiling his length together, roaring like thunder underground, he sped from his deep lair through its great door, out into the huge passages of the mountain-palace and up towards the Front Gate. To hunt the whole mountain till he had caught the thief and had torn and trampled him was his one thought. He issued from the Gate, the waters rose in fierce whistling steam, and up he soared blazing into the air and settled on the mountain-top in a spout of green and scarlet flame. The dwarves heard the awful rumour of his flight, and they crouched against the walls of the grassy terrace cringing under boulders, hoping somehow to escape the frightful eyes of the hunting dragon. There they would have all been killed, if it had not been for Bilbo once again. Quick! Quick! he gasped.

Deep they delved us, fair they wrought us, high they builded us; but they are gone.

Go now, and die in what way seems best to you.

He hated it and loved it, as he hated and loved himself. He could not get rid of it. He had no will left in the matter.

I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands.

Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.