Original artwork, not a still
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.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
The repeated halves make Bilbo’s judgment difficult to sort out as it is spoken. Beneath the arithmetic, he admits both knowing people less well than he wishes and liking some less than they deserve. The tangled phrasing makes self-criticism sound uncomfortably close to an insult.
Context reviewed
