I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it's very difficult to find anyone.' I should think so — in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!

This exchange occurs at the very beginning of J. R. R. Tolkien’s children’s novel The Hobbit (1937). The wizard Gandalf approaches Bilbo Baggins outside Bag End in the Shire and hints at recruiting him for an “adventure.” Bilbo—comfortable, respectable, and attached to routine—responds with comic alarm, voicing the hobbits’ general suspicion of anything that disrupts meals and schedules. The moment sets the tone for the book’s central contrast between domestic security and the unpredictable call to the wider world, and it introduces Bilbo’s initial resistance that will be tested and transformed over the course of the story.

The passage humorously defines “adventure” from a hobbit’s perspective: not romance or heroism, but inconvenience—“disturbing,” “uncomfortable,” and liable to interfere with dinner. Tolkien uses Bilbo’s fussiness to establish character and to make the later growth credible: the reluctant protagonist begins as someone who equates goodness with order, punctuality, and comfort. The line also gently satirizes complacency and insularity, suggesting that a life organized entirely around safety and routine can become narrow. At the same time, it acknowledges the real costs of adventure—risk, disruption, and loss of control—making the eventual choice to go feel earned rather than inevitable.