Gandalf

A quote from Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

My two recorded versions:

I'm pretty sure I got these reasonably close (I wrote them immediately afterwards - but in the dark ;-).

Interestingly there are different variants on the web:

Perhaps someone can find the original(s) in the books and tell me where they are? I'll need the exact publication information: book title, year, publisher and page(s).

2003 Mar 10: Rob Burke from MIT found a page of sound files which contains one version of the quote. As I transcribe it from that sound file, the quote is: "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

2004 Jan 22: Thanks to Tim Shaffer (Austin, TX) and Michael Woodhead for pointing out (on the same day, how curious!) where the quote can be found.

'So do I,' said Gandalf, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
-- Gandalf,
J.R.R. Tolkien,
Fellowship of the Ring, Second chapter,
"The Shadow of the Past",
just after the Elvish writing and poem that describes the One Ring.

Amazingly, none of the quotes given above matches this exactly! Are there others?

2007 Jan 2 Mathias Collet points out a discussion on this subject in What To Do With The Time That Is Given: Vocation in The Lord of the Rings by Eric David, in the section on Frodo.

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Schneider Lab
origin: 2002 April 25
updated: 2012 Apr 06
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