There’s not a lot of humor in LOTR, but one line – almost a throwaway by Gandalf – always makes me smile.
When he’s recounting to the Council his meeting with Saruman (and Saruman’s subsequent betrayal), he says that Saruman tells him he’s no longer Saruman the White, but Saruman of Many Colors. Saruman’s robes, which initially appeared white, were actually a blend of various colors, “bewildering to the eye.”
And Gandalf – who realizes in an instant that he has told Saruman about the Ring, where it was, who had it, and now knows the only hope of defeating Sauron has now become much, much slimmer, says:
Just thought of another, from the movie. In Moria, Boromir says, with a wonderful mixture of exasperation and can-it-get-any-worse wonderment, “They have a cave troll!”
Yes! Those are the ones I couldn’t recall word for word. I can only find The Hobbit (I have paperbacks, been meaning to get nice hardcovers soon), so I can’t quote as I would like.
The first one I would like spoken at my memorial service(not that I’m planning on having one soon).
It’s not a quote, but a wonderfully comic scene involving Aragorn and the herbalist in the House of Healing. The old man goes on and on (as did the old woman) about the many fine qualities of Kingsfoil, where it grows etc. And through it all, Aragorn is as patient as may be, until he finally lets his exasperation show. It’s one of my favorite bits in the book–such a human touch to this legend stuff.
Wow not one has said the Famous Sam Gamgee Line: …"I wasn’t dropp’in no eaves, I swear…please Mr. Gandalf sir, don’t turn me into anything…Un-natural…"
Gandalf telling off Denethor in no uncertain terms:
“…And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I also am a steward. Did you not know?”
A line in Quenya from Galadriel’s lament:
*
Sí man i yulma nin enquantuva?*
Who now shall refill the cup for me?
I like the quote too, but I never got the impression that Gandalf told Saruman that the One Ring was in the possesion of a Hobbit of the Shire named Frodo Baggins (in the book, I think the movies imply he did). In fact in “In the Shadow of the Past” he specifically says he never told Saruman about the Ring :“I might perhaps have consulted Saruman the White, but something always held me back.”
Saruman started keeping spies in the Shire and in Bree precisely because he was trying to understand Gandalf’s interest in the Shire.
One of my favorite lines is the one about future generations, and not being able to determine what sort of weather they will have, I can’t find it at the moment.
"There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made…”
“Yet the lies that Melkor, the mighty and accursed, Morgoth Bauglir, the Power of Terror and of Hate, sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not die and cannot be destroyed; and ever and anon it sprouts anew, and will bear dark fruit even unto the latest days.”
“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 wherin we are ste, 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.”
The one that Gandalf says in reference to Eowyn…who knows what something something in the dark reaches of the something something etc… Jackson had Wormtongue say it (which for me added all manner of dimension and emotion to the whole thing) in the film.
I know I suck at this game, and I can’t find my books, but does anyone have that quote handy?
"But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?”
I’m so glad this thread is still around & I can add some great lines to those already mentioned:
from Fellowship, after the “conspiracy” of Frodo’s friends is unmasked, Merry says: “You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin…But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo…” [now that’s friendship]
from Two Towers. Eomer asks Aragorn “How shall a man judge what to do in such times?” and Aragorn answers “As he has ever judged,…Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among men”
Lastly, tho it’s hard to stop, from Return: Frodo, at the Havens says …“It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”
I have so many passages underlined, both in my paperbacks from 1965 - and in my new copy of “Bored of the Rings”.
I had to hunt up this gory bit from the Silmarillion. High King Fingon goes toe-to-toe with a Balrog and loses. Tolkien surprised me a bit by how dark and nasty the fight got.
But now in the western battle Fingon and Turgon were assailed by a tide of foes thrice greater than all the force that was left to them. Gothmog, Lord of Balrogs, high captain of Angband, was come; and he drove a dark wedge between the Elvenhosts, surrounding King Fingon, and thrusting Turgon and Hurin aside towards the Fen of Serech. Then he turned upon Fingon. That was a grim meeting. At last Fingon stood alone with his guard dead about him; and he fought with Gothmog, until another Balrog came behind and cast a thong of fire about him. Then Gothmog hewed him with his black axe, and a white flame sprang from the helm of Fingon as it was cloven. Thus fell the High King of the Noldor; and they beat him into the dust with their maces, and his banner, blue and silver, they trod into the mire of his blood.
