Small Acts of Kindness & Love

Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? Perhaps because I am afraid, and he gives me courage.

-Gandalf  

-from The Hobbit movie, Tolkien 

It's Like in the Great Stories Mr. Frodo

Frodo : I can't do this, Sam.
Sam : I know. It's all wrong.
By rights we shouldn't even be here.
But we are.
It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo.
The ones that really mattered.
Full of darkness and danger they were,
and sometimes you didn't want to know the end.
Because how could the end be happy.
How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened.
But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow.

Even darkness must pass.
A new day will come.
And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.

Those were the stories that stayed with you.
That meant something.
Even if you were too small to understand why.
But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand.
I know now.
Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something.

Frodo : What are we holding on to, Sam?

Sam : That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

~ J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, (movie version)

The Time that is Given to Us

"I wish it need not have happened in my time", said Frodo.

"So do I", said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times.
"But that is not for us to decide.

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

"There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought."

~J. R. R. Tolkien, 'The Fellowship of the Ring'