John Milton Quotes

Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.

Virtue could see to do what Virtue would by her own radiant light, though sun and moon where in the flat sea sunk.

Solitude is sometimes best society.

Biochemically, love is just like eating large amounts of chocolate.

There are no songs comparable to the songs of Zion, no orations equal to those of the prophets, and no politics like those which the Scriptures teach.

Spirits that live throughout, Vital in every part, not as frail man, In entrails, heart or head, liver or reins, Cannot but by annihilating die.

When language in common use in any country becomes irregular and depraved, it is followed by their ruin and degradation. For what do terms used without skill or meaning, which are at once corrupt and misapplied, denote but a people listless, supine, and ripe for servitude?

He alone is worthy of the appellation who either does great things, or teaches how they may be done, or describes them with a suitable majesty when they have been done; but those only are great things which tend to render life more happy, which increase the innocent enjoyments and comforts of existence, or which pave the way to a state of future bliss more permanent and more pure.

Hide me from day's garish eye, While the bee with honied thigh, That at her flowery work doth sing, And the waters murmuring With such consort as they keep, Entice the dewy-feathered sleep.

Satan; so call him now, his former name Is heard no more in heaven.

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.

He 's gone, and who knows how he may report Thy words by adding fuel to the flame?

For truth is strong next to the Almighty. She needs no policies or stratagems or licensings to make her victorious. These are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power.

We should be wary what persecution we raise against the living labors of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books, since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom; and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself; slays an immortality rather than a life.

So may'st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop Into thy mother's lap.

Midnight brought on the dusky hour Friendliest to sleep and silence.

And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light.

All is not lost, the unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and the courage never to submit or yield.

The very essence of truth is plainness and brightness; the darkness and crookedness is our own. The wisdom of God created understanding, fit and proportionable to truth, the object and end of it, as the eye to the thing visible. If our understanding have a film of ignorance over it, or be blear with gazing on other false glitterings, what is that to truth?

The martyrs shook the powers of darkness with the irresistible power of weakness.

He left it in thy power, ordaind thy will By nature free, not over-rul'd by Fate Inextricable, or strict necessity.

In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs.

A man may be ungrateful, but the human race is not so.

The childhood shows the man As morning shows the day. Be famous then By wisdom; as thy empire must extend, So let extend thy mind o'er all the world.

Those whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme

And fast by, hanging in a golden chain, This pendent world, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude, close by the moon.

The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty.

But oh the heavy change, now thou art gone, Now thou art gone and never must return!

Midnight shout and revelry, Tipsy dance and jollity.

And what is faith, love, virtue unassayed Alone, without exterior help sustained?

Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls his watery labyrinth, which whoso drinks forgets both joy and grief.

To know that which lies before us in daily life is the prime wisdom.

Th' ethereal mould Incapable of stain would soon expel Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire, Victorious. Thus repuls'd, our final hope Is flat despair.

The rising world of waters dark and deep.

To live a life half dead, a living death.

I fled, and cry'd out, Death; Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sigh'd From all her caves, and back resounded, Death.

Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.

Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy.

Ere the blabbing eastern scout, The nice morn, on th' Indian steep From her cabin'd loop-hole peep.

Th'invention all admir'd, and each, how he to be th'inventor miss'd; so easy it seem'd once found, which yet unfound most would have thought impossible.

The pious and just honoring of ourselves may be thought the fountainhead from whence every laudable and worthy enterprise issues forth.

The sun to me is dark And silent as the moon, When she deserts the night Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.

What needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones,- The labour of an age in piled stones? Or that his hallow'd relics should be hid Under a star-y-pointing pyramid? Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?

The best apology against false accusers is silence.

You can make hell out of heaven and heaven out of hell. It's all in the mind.

By this time, like one who had set out on his way by night, and travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at a far distance, true colours and shapes.

Tears such as angels weep.

Into this wild abyss, The womb of Nature and perhaps her grave.