I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
Meaning of the quote
This quote by J.R.R. Tolkien, the famous English novelist, is a bit tricky to understand. It basically means that he doesn't know many of the people he knows as well as he'd like to, and he likes even fewer of them as much as they deserve. In other words, he feels he's not as close to most people as he'd want to be, and he doesn't appreciate some of them as much as they should be appreciated.
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