The best Book Quotes

"Lost something?"
"Yes, my mind."

The end justifies the means. Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing to get the right result.

How can I put it poetically? Time is the life jacket of truth; it always brings it to the surface.

Lifted her gaze to the last telephone pole on the street. A mass of black balloons were caught there, snarled in the lines. The wind was wrestling to wrench them free, and they bobbled and weaved, pulling hard to escape. The wires held the balloons implacably where they were. She recoiled at the sight of them. They were dreadful - somehow they were dreadful - a dead spot in the sky.

If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!

The Light failed; but the Darkness that followed was more than loss of light.

The Elves made many rings; but secretly Sauron made One Ring to rule all the others, and their power was bound up with it.

And for a great deal it seemed good to him, for in the music there were no flaws.

All have their worth and each contributes to the worth of the others.

"Many are the strange chances of the world," said Mithrandir, "and help oft shall come from the hands of the weak when the Wise falter."

"Take now this Ring," he said; "for thy labours and thy cares will be heavy, but in all it will support thee and defend thee from weariness. For this is the Ring of Fire, and herewith, maybe, thou shalt rekindle hearts to the valour of old in a world that grows chill."

But those who saw the things that were done in that time, deeds of valour and wonder, have elsewhere told the tale of the War of the Ring, and how it ended both in victory unlooked for and in sorrow long foreseen.

To him that is pitiless the deeds of pity are ever strange and beyond comprehension.

These folk are hewers of trees and hunters of beasts; therefore we are their unfriends, and if they will not depart we shall afflict them in all ways that we can.

War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.

But her beauty was more than their beauty, and her sorrow deeper than their sorrows; and she knelt before Mandos and sang to him.

We renounce no friendship. But it may be the part of a friend to rebuke a friend's folly.

Their "magic" is Art, delivered from many of its human limitations.

For if joyful is the fountain that rises in the sun, its springs are in the wells of sorrow unfathomable at the foundations of the Earth.

A sister they had, Galadriel, most beautiful of all the house of Finwë; her hair was lit with gold as though it had caught in a mesh the radiance of Laurelin.

But he that sows lies in the end shall not lack of a harvest, and soon he may rest from toil indeed, while others reap and sow in his stead.

And thus it came to pass that the Silmarils found their long homes: one in the airs of heaven, and one in the fires of the heart of the world, and one in the deep waters.

Farewell sweet earth and northern sky,
for ever blest, since here did lie
and here with lissom limbs did run
beneath the Moon, beneath the Sun,
Lúthien Tinúviel
more fair than Mortal tongue can tell.
Though all to ruin fell the world
and were dissolved and backward hurled;
unmade into the old abyss,
yet were its making good, for this -
the dusk, the dawn, the earth, the sea -
that Lúthien for a time should be.

He passed over Dor-nu-Fauglith like a wind amid the dust, and all that beheld his onset fled in amaze, thinking that Orome himself was come: for a great madness of rage was upon him, so that his eyes shone like the eyes of the Valar.

Truly, Water is become now fairer than my heart imagined, neither had my secret thought conceived the snowflake, nor in all my music was contained the falling of the rain.

Then hate overcame Feanor"s fear, and he cursed Melkor and bade him be gone, saying: "Get thee gone from my gate, thou jail-crow of Mandos!" And he shut the doors of his house in the face of the mightiest of all dwellers in Ea.

The doom of the Elves is to be immortal, to love the beauty of the world, to bring it to full flower with their gifts of delicacy and perfection, to last while it lasts, never leaving it even when ‘slain', but returning – and yet, when the Followers come, to teach them, and make way for them, to ‘fade' as the Followers grow and absorb the life from which both proceed. The Doom of Men is mortality, freedom from the circles of the world.

Hope could be a wonderful thing. But hope could crush you anew every single day. Hope could be the cruelest thing in the world.

It was obvious and a bit of cliché, but we don't really age in a straight line. We age in a circle, curving back to childhood, but in all the wrong ways.

Grief is love made homeless.

She'd been swallowed up in her own pain for so many years that she didn't notice his until it was too late.

Hess had long thought of death with indifference. Not because he hated life, but because existence was painful.

If you honestly feel you have done something so terrible that you cannot be forgiven, then I am willing to share your sins with you. When we die, if we should have to stand before God and be judged, then I will tell him I am as much to blame as you and that half your punishment should be portioned out to me.

The price of getting what you want is getting what you once wanted.

What power would Hell have if those here imprisoned were not able to dream of Heaven?

Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.

For love is no part of the dreamworld. Love belongs to Desire, and Desire is always cruel.

Never trust the storyteller. Only trust the story.

Dreams shape the world.

For some folks death is release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.

You hurt. It's okay. I hurt too. Hold my hand.

"I must confess, I have always wondered what lay beyond life, my dear."
"Yeah, everybody wonders. And sooner or later everybody gets to find out."

"Is there a word for forgetting the name of someone when you want to introduce them to someone else at the same time you realize you've forgotten the name of the person you're introducing them to as well?"
"No."

"You will forget. Death or life will take him from your minds."
"I know," whispered Despair, in her distant, empty voice. "But I shall remember him."

Writers are liars my dear, surely you know that by now?

"Well, that depends, I suppose. I heard someone once say that men dance the same way they have sex. So, if you want everyone here to think you're the kind of guy who just sits around and-"
He stood up. "Let's dance."

Sometimes you wake up from a dream. Sometimes you wake up in a dream. And sometimes, every once in a while, you wake up in someone else's dream.

Love and loyalty runs deeper than blood.

I'd said it before and meant it: Alive or undead, the love of my life was a badass.

"Do you think I'm pretty?"
"I think you're beautiful."
"Beautiful?"
"You are so beautiful, it hurts sometimes."