Gandalf Shire Quotes

When evening in the Shire was grey his footsteps on the Hill were heard; before the dawn he went away on journey long without a word. From Wilderland to Western shore, from northern waste to southern hill, through dragon-lair and hidden door and darkling woods he walked at will. With Dwarf and Hobbit, Elves and Men, with mortal and immortal folk, with bird on bough and beast in den, in their own secret tongues he spoke. A deadly sword, a healing hand, a back that bent beneath its load; a trumpet-voice, a burning brand, a weary pilgrim on the road. A lord of wisdom throned he sat, swift in anger, quick to laugh; an old man in a battered hat who leaned upon a thorny staff. He stood upon the bridge alone and Fire and Shadow both defied; his staff was broken on the stone, in Khazad-dûm his wisdom died.

Are you in pain, Frodo?' said Gandalf quietly as he rode by Frodo's side. 'Well, yes I am,' said Frodo. 'It is my shoulder. The wound aches, and the memory of darkness is heavy on me. It was a year ago today.' 'Alas! there are some wounds that cannot be wholly cured,' said Gandalf. 'I fear it may be so with mine,' said Frodo. 'There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?' Gandalf did not answer.

When you begin to care too much about what everyone else says, your confidence shrinks and you start to feel like insignificant, little Jack in a strange land of intimidating giants. But when you come to realize that opinions are as diverse and plentiful as dried beans, you might reach the conclusion that your own is of the greatest worth. That's when your confidence grows, and soon you find yourself striding like Gandalf the wondrous wizard among common hobbits in the shire. Respecting your own opinion is the magic that transforms both you and your world.

Alas! there are some wounds that cannot be wholly cured," said Gandalf. "I fear it may be so with mine," said Frodo. "There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?

There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart of the fattest and most timid hobbit, waiting for some final and desperate danger to make it grow. Frodo was neither very fat nor very timid; indeed, though he did not know it, Bilbo (and Gandalf) had thought him the best hobbit in the Shire. He thought he had come to the end of his adventure, and a terrible end, but the thought hardened him.

En la novela de Tolkien, El señor de los anillos, el hobbit Frodo es un héroe renuente; Frodo no quiere asumir la tarea que le ha sido encomendada; Frodo preferiría quedarse en el Shire y vivir en paz allí. En México muchos Frodos piensan así, actúan así, quieren desentenderse así. Prefieren criticar a quienes gobiernan en vez de involucrarse para hacerlo mejor; eligen la pasividad complaciente en lugar de la participación comprometida. Pero Frodo no tiene otra opción y el ciudadano mexicano tampoco. Frodo tiene la tarea de salvar a su mundo y el ciudadano mexicano tiene la tarea de salvar a su país. Un hobbit insignificante destruye el anillo y un ciudadano mexicano puede hacerlo también. Como dice el mago Gandalf: "Todo lo que tenemos que decidir es qué hacer con el tiempo que nos ha sido dado." Para México es tiempo de preguntar: ¿Y Frodo?

I am not coming to the Shire. You must settle its affairs yourselves; that is what you have been trained for. Do you not yet understand? My time is over: it is no longer my task to set things to rights, nor to help folk to do so. And as for you, my dear friends, you will need no help. You are grown up now. Grown indeed very high; among the great you are, and I have no longer any fear at all for any of you.

He looked at Frodo and smiled. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I think that will do – but it must not be any later. I am getting very anxious. In the meanwhile, do take care, and don’t let out any hint of where you are going! And see that Sam Gamgee does not talk. If he does, I really shall turn him into a toad.’ ‘As for where I am going,’ said Frodo, ‘it would be difficult to give that away, for I have no clear idea myself, yet.’ ‘Don’t be absurd!’ said Gandalf. ‘I am not warning you against leaving an address at the post-office! But you are leaving the Shire – and that should not be known, until you are far away.

The moment when Pippin and Beregond hear the Black Riders and see them swoop on Faramir in ‘The Siege of Gondor’, V/4, is typical: Suddenly as they talked they were stricken dumb, frozen as it were to listening stones. Pippin cowered down with his hands pressed to his ears; but Beregond… remained there, stiffened, staring out with starting eyes. Pippin knew the shuddering cry that he had heard: it was the same that he had heard long ago in the Marish of the Shire, but now it was grown in power and hatred, piercing the heart with a poisonous despair. The last phrase is a critical one. The Ringwraiths work for the most part not physically but psychologically, paralysing the will, disarming all resistance. This may have something to do with the process of becoming a wraith yourself. That can happen as a result of a force from outside. As Gandalf points out, explaining the Morgul-knife, if the splinter had not been cut out, ‘you would have become a wraith under the dominion of the Dark Lord’. But more usually the suspicion is that people make themselves into wraiths. They accept the gifts of Sauron, quite likely with the intention of using them for some purpose which they identify as good. But then they start to cut corners, to eliminate opponents, to believe in some ‘cause’ which justifies everything they do. In the end the ‘cause’, or the habits they have acquired while working for the ‘cause’, destroys any moral sense and even any remaining humanity. The spectacle of the person ‘eaten up inside’ by devotion to some abstraction has been so familiar throughout the twentieth century as to make the idea of the wraith, and the wraithing-process, horribly recognizable, in a way non-fantastic. The realism of this image of evil is increased by the examples we have of people on their way to becoming wraiths themselves. We have just the start of this, enough to be ominous, in the cases of Bilbo and Frodo, and the others mentioned above. Gollum is much further along the road, though in The Lord of the Rings Gollum, detached from the Ring many years before, is possibly beginning to recover, as is shown by the fact that he has started to call himself by his old name, Sméagol, the name he had when he used to be a hobbit, and is also occasionally and significantly able to say ‘I’. There is a striking dialogue between what one might call his hobbit-personality (Sméagol) and his Ring-personality (Gollum, ‘my precious’) in ‘The Passage of the Marshes’, which makes the point that the two are at least connected: one can imagine the one developing out of the other, pure evil growing out of mere ordinary human weakness and selfishness. However, the best example of ‘wraithing’ in The Lord of the Rings must be Saruman.

they are no more than slaves in his realm. Thus we see the use of genetic engineering—the creation of robotic orcs—to extend the dictatorship of Mordor throughout the world. At its heart, the War of the Ring is a struggle to preserve the essential freedom and humanity of the inhabitants of Middle-earth. “It would be a grievous blow to the world,” says Gandalf the Grey, “if the Dark Power overcame the Shire; if all your kind . . . became enslaved.

Dear Frodo, Bad news has reached me here. I must go off at once. You had better leave Bag End soon, and get out of the Shire before the end of July at latest. I will return as soon as I can; and I will follow you, if I find that you are gone. Leave a message for me here, if you pass through Bree. You can trust the landlord (Butterbur). You may meet a friend of mine on the Road: a Man, lean, dark, tall, by some called Strider. He knows our business and will help you. Make for Rivendell. There I hope we may meet again. If I do not come, Elrond will advise you. Yours in haste GANDALF. PS. Do NOT use It again, not for any reason whatever! Do not travel by night! PPS. Make sure that it is the real Strider. There are many strange men on the roads. His true name is Aragorn. All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king. PPPS. I hope Butterbur sends this promptly. A worthy man, but his memory is like a lumber-room: thing wanted always buried. If he forgets, I shall roast him. Fare Well!

How bright your garden looks!’ said Gandalf. ‘Yes,’ said Bilbo. ‘I am very fond indeed of it, and of all the dear old Shire; but I think I need a holiday.

It isn't that Gandalf thinks the Shire is not worth looking after, but rather that in order for any land to be kept from utter darkness for many ages to come, the quest to destroy the ring must succeed, and in the darkness into which they are all walking, it is better to trust to the loyalty of friends than to the power of well-meaning strangers

When evening in the Shire was grey his [Gandalf] footsteps on the Hill were heard; before the dawn he went away on journey long without a word. From Wilderland to Western shore, from northern waste to southern hill, through dragon-lair and hidden door and darkling woods he walked at will. With Dwarf and Hobbit, Elves and Men, with mortal and immortal folk, with bird on bough and beast in den, in their own secret tongues he spoke. A deadly sword, a healing hand, a back that bent beneath its load; a trumpet-voice, a burning brand, a weary pilgrim on the road. A lord of wisdom throned he sat, swift in anger, quick to laugh; an old man in a battered hat who leaned upon a thorny staff. He stood upon the bridge alone and Fire and Shadow both defied; his staff was broken on the stone, in Khazad-dûm his wisdom died.

...I [Gandalf] may be away for a good while; but I'll come and see you [Frodo] again, as soon as I can. Expect me when you see me! I shall slip in quietly. I shan't often be visiting the Shire openly again. I find that I have become rather unpopular. They say I am a nuisance and a disturber of the peace...

I fear it may be so with mine,’ said Frodo. ‘There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?’ Gandalf did not answer.

He therefore began to collect detailed information about the Shire, its chief persons and families, its roads, and other matters. For this he used Hobbits within the Shire, in the pay of the Bracegirdles and the Sackville-Bagginses, but his agents were Men, of Dunlendish origin. When Gandalf had refused to treat with him Saruman had redoubled his efforts. The Rangers were suspicious, but did not actually refuse entry to the servants of Saruman – for Gandalf was not at liberty to warn them, and when he had gone off to Isengard Saruman was still recognised as an ally.

The fourteenth of the New Year,’ said Gandalf; ‘or if you like, the eighth day of April in the Shire-reckoning. * But in Gondor the New Year will always now begin upon the twenty-fifth of March when Sauron fell, and when you were brought out of the fire to the King. He