Pity and Mercy

What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!”

“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.”

“I am sorry,” said Frodo. “But I am frightened; and I do not feel any pity for Gollum.”

“You have not seen him,” Gandalf broke in.

“No, and I don’t want to,” said Frodo. I can’t understand you. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death.”

“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many – yours not least.

J. R. R. Tolkien – The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, Chapter 2

Friendship

“It is going to be very dangerous, Sam. ‘It is already dangerous. Most likely neither of us will come back.’
‘If you don’t come back, sir, then I shan’t, that’s certain,’ said Sam.

‘Don’t you leave him! they said to me.
Leave him! I said. I never mean to. I am going with him, if he climbs to the Moon, and if any of those Black Rulers try to stop him, they’ll have Sam Gamgee to reckon with, I said.

They laughed.’ “

J. R. R. Tolkien, from The Fellowship of the Ring

Swimming Upstream

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”

G. K. Chesterton, “The Five Deaths of the Faith” The Everlasting Man

chance of turning back

“But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have just landed in them, usually – their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on – and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end”

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Head in the Sand

“The wide world is all about you; you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord Of The Ring

Self-Sacrifice

“It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord Of The Rings