Isn't the main reason for there being any copyright-laws in the first place the point that creative people get their pay from their work? At least if one looks at widely known cases concerning breaches to the copyright-laws they always carry the element of making or losing money in them. It may be that there are other concerns there too, but usually they seem to be acted upon only after there are some considerable amounts of money involved...
So if someone prints a book by someone else and sells them on the streets or burns movies to dvd's and sells them he's breaking the copyright. Or if someone shares music in the net thus hindering the sales of the album concerned he breaches the law.
In the academic circles it's quite normal to make even fairly long quotes. Fex. in the literary studies you may need to quote a whole work, like a poem, if you're going to analyse it in your own study. And I have yet to hear a case where an author would have denied the student's or reseacher's right to do that based on copyright-laws.
So long as you don't intend to make a profit with Tolkien or to share his works online, I think you can sleep your nights in peace, Menel.
