Most moving moments in LotR

[Attalus]

It makes me ashamed that, since I have reread the books over a hundred times (since 1965!) that I skip over the parts about Mordor. Thanks for reminding me.

[Ingwe]

The leave-taking to Valinor - Frodo and Bilbo leave amongst others, generally a scene both in the books and the movies (mainly the books) that makes me want to cry along with them.

[AndMorgothCame.]

This great thread seems to have become dormant, but all the more reason to not let it die!

In my opinion, the most moving moment in the books is when Sam, Frodo, and Gollum have ascended the stairs of Cirith Ungol (Two Towers Book IV), and, after Smeagol runs off to further exact his scheme, Frodo, too exhausted to go on, lays his head in his gardener's lap:

"And so Gollum found them hours later, when he returned, crawling and creeping down the path out of the gloom ahead. Sam sat propped against the stone, his head dropping sideways and his breathing heavy. In his lap lay Frodo’s head, drowned deep in sleep; upon his white forehead lay one of Sam’s brown hands, and the other lay softly upon his master’s breast. Peace was in both their faces.

Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean, hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo’s knee – but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of his youth, an old starved pitiable thing."

The amazing thing about this passage is that Tolkien takes a character that spans 4 books and is displayed as a treacherous, soul-less creature and within two paragraphs turns him into a sad, lonely thing that ALMOST has redeeming values. For me, the most touching moment in The Lord of the Rings.

[Morwen]

In Lorien, when Galadriel sings her lament...
"But if of ships I now should sing, what ship would come to me?
What ship would bear me ever back, across so wide a sea?"
Those two lines just really get me every time.
I'm sure there are many, many more moments aswell...