Top 100 John Milton Quotes
#1. Our two first parents, yet the only two Of mankind, in the happy garden placed, Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love, Uninterrupted joy, unrivalled love In blissful solitude.
John Milton
#2. For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.
John Milton
#3. Who knows not Circe, The daughter of the Sun , whose charmed cup Whoever tasted, lost his upright shape, And downward fell into a groveling swine?
John Milton
#4. Yet hold it more humane, more heav'nly, first, By winning words to conquer willing hearts, And make persuasion do the work of fear.
John Milton
#5. Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live.
John Milton
#7. There is nothing that making men rich and strong but that which they carry inside of them. True wealth is of the heart, not of the hand.
John Milton
#8. Promiscuous reading is necessary to the constituting of human nature. The attempt to keep out evil doctrine by licensing is like the exploit of that gallant man who thought to keep out the crows by shutting the park gate.
John Milton
#9. What need a man forestall his date of grief, And run to meet what he would most avoid?.
John Milton
#10. No man [ ... ] can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free, being the image and resemblance of God himself.
John Milton
#11. Ink is the blood of the printing-press.
John Milton
#12. From morn to noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, a summer's day; and with the setting sun dropped from the zenith like a falling star.
John Milton
#13. We read not that Christ ever exercised force but once; and that was to drive profane ones out of his Temple, not to force them in.
John Milton
#14. He touch'd the tender stops of various quills, With eager thought warbling his Doric lay.
John Milton
#15. None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but licence.
John Milton
#16. In loving thou dost well, in passion not,
Wherein true love consists not: Love refines
The thoughts, and heart enlarges; hath his seat
In reason, and is judicious
John Milton
#17. No mighty trance, or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
John Milton
#19. Beauty is Nature's coin, must not be hoarded, But must be current, and the good thereof Consists in mutual and partaken bliss.
John Milton
#20. Farewell happy fields,
Where joy forever dwells: Hail, horrors, hail.
John Milton
#21. The low'ring element Scowls o'er the darken'd landscape.
John Milton
#22. Sweet bird that shunn'st the nose of folly, Most musical, most melancholy! Thee, chauntress, oft, the woods among, I woo, to hear thy even-song.
John Milton
#23. Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest birds.
John Milton
#24. And God made two great lights, great for their use
To man, the greater to have rule by day, The less by night ...
John Milton
#25. Heaven
Is as the Book of God before thee set,
Wherein to read His wondrous works.
John Milton
#26. A short retirement urges a sweet return.
John Milton
#27. So spake Israel's true king, and to the Fiend
Made answer meet, that made void all his wiles.
So fares it, when with truth falsehood contends.
John Milton
#28. It was that fatal and perfidious bark, Built in th' eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark.
John Milton
#29. So farwel Hope, and with Hope farwel Fear, Farwel Remorse: all Good to me is lost; Evil be thou my Good; by thee at least Divided Empire with Heav'ns King I hold By thee, and more then half perhaps will reigne; As Man ere long, and this new World shall know. Thus
John Milton
#30. First there was Chaos,
the vast immeasurable abyss
Outrageous as a sea,
dark, wasteful, wild.
John Milton
#31. How charming is divine Philosophy!
Not harsh, and crabbed as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets,
Where no crude surfet raigns.
John Milton
#32. The love-lorn nightingale nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well.
John Milton
#33. I hate when vice can bolt her arguments,
And virtue has no tongue to check her pride.
John Milton
#34. And as an ev'ning dragon came, Assailant on the perched roosts And nests in order rang'd Of tame villatic fowl.
John Milton
#35. O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death.
John Milton
#36. Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.
John Milton
#37. Th' unconquerable will,/ And study of revenge, immortal hate,/ And courage never to submit or yield/ And what is else not to be overcome?
John Milton
#38. A limbo large and broad, since call'd The Paradise of Fools to few unknown.
John Milton
#39. Lifted up so high I disdained subjection, and thought one step higher would set me highest.
John Milton
#40. These evils I deserve, and more ... Justly, yet despair not of his final pardon, Whose ear is ever open, and his eye Gracious to re-admit the suppliant.
John Milton
#41. He that hath light within their own breast, may sit in the centre and enjoy bright day.
John Milton
#42. God sure esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous person, more that the restraint of ten vicious.
John Milton
#43. Beauty is nature's brag, and must be shown in courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, where most may wonder at the workmanship.
John Milton
#45. Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild.
John Milton
#46. Knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defiled.
John Milton
#47. Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm, A sylvan scene, and as the ranks ascend Shade above shade, a woody theatre Of stateliest view.
John Milton
#48. In contemplation of created things, by steps we may ascend to God.
John Milton
#49. The rising world of waters dark and deep.
John Milton
#50. That practis'd falsehood under saintly shew, Deep malice to conceal, couch'd with revenge.
John Milton
#51. Witness this new-made world, another Heav'n
From Heaven Gate not farr, founded in view
On the clear Hyaline, the Glassie Sea;
Of amplitude almost immense, with Starr's
Numerous, and every Starr perhaps a world
Of destined habitation.
John Milton
#52. The whole freedom of man consists either in spiritual or civil liberty.
John Milton
#53. It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit,
Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit,
That woman's love can win, or long inherit;
But what it is, hard is to say,
Harder to hit.
John Milton
#54. Love Virtue, she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime; Or, if Virtue feeble were, Heav'n itself would stoop to her.
John Milton
#55. His spear, to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills to be the mast Of some great ammiral were but a wand, He walk'd with to support uneasy steps Over the burning marle.
John Milton
#56. O why did God, Creator wise, that peopled highest heav'n With Spirits masculine, create at last This novelty on earth, this fair defect Of nature, and not fill the world at once With men as angels without feminine, Or find some other way to generate Mankind?
John Milton
#57. I thence invoke my thy aid to my adventurous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar above the Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
John Milton
#58. Even the demons are encouraged when their chief is not lost in loss itself.
John Milton
#59. And some are fall'n, to disobedience fall'n, And so from Heav'n to deepest Hell; O fall From what high state of bliss into what woe!
John Milton
#60. And feel by turns the bitter change
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce.
John Milton
#61. Wisdom's self oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, where with her best nurse Contemplation, she plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings that in the various bustle of resort were all to-ruffled, and sometimes impaired.
John Milton
#62. Cyriack, whose Grandsire on the Royal Bench Of British Themis, with no mean applause Pronounced and in his volumes taught our Laws, Which others at their Bar so often wrench
John Milton
#63. Sense of pleasure we may well
Spare out of life perhaps, and not repine,
But live content, which is the calmest life;
But pain is perfect misery, the worst
Of evils, and excessive, overturns
All patience.
John Milton
#64. O Conscience, into what abyss of fears
And horrors hast thou driven me, out of which
I find no way, from deep to deeper plunged.
John Milton
#65. Anon out of the earth a fabric huge Rose, like an exhalation.
John Milton
#66. 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?
John Milton
#68. Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows.
John Milton
#69. Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.
John Milton
#70. Prudence is the virtue by which we discern what is proper to do under various circumstances in time and place.
John Milton
#71. For God will deign to visit oft the dwellings of just men
delighted, and with frequent intercourse
thither will send his winged messengers on errants of supernal grace.
John Milton
#72. Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.
John Milton
#73. Education of youth is not a bow for every man to shoot in that counts himself a teacher; but will require sinews almost equal to those which Homer gave to Ulysses.
John Milton
#74. How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence through the empty-vaulted night, At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness till it smiled!
John Milton
#75. The happy place
Imparts to thee no happiness, no joy
Rather inflames thy torment, representing
Lost bliss, to thee no more communicable;
So never more in Hell than when in Heaven.
John Milton
#76. A crown Golden in show, is but a wreath of thorns, Bring dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless nights To him who wears the regal diadem
John Milton
#77. I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs
By the known rules of ancient liberty,
When straight a barbarous noise environs me
Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes and dogs.
John Milton
#78. Better to reign in hell than serve in heav'n.
John Milton
#79. The Tree of Knowledge grew fast by, Knowledge of Good bought dear by knowing ill.
John Milton
#80. Which, if not victory, is yet revenge.
John Milton
#81. Out of such prison, though Spirits of purest light, Purest at first, now gross by sinning grown.
John Milton
#82. Virtue could see to do what Virtue would by her own radiant light, though sun and moon where in the flat sea sunk.
John Milton
#83. While yet we live, scarce one short hour perhaps,
Between us two let there be peace, both joining,
As joined in injuries, and enmity
Against a foe by doom express assigned us,
That cruel serpent.
John Milton
#84. A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
John Milton
#85. Yet I shall temper so Justice with mercy, as may illustrate most Them fully satisfy'd, and thee appease.
John Milton
#86. Some say no evil thing that walks by night, In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen, Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine, Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity.
John Milton
#87. The mind is a universe and can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
John Milton
#88. Thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers.
John Milton
#89. Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom ...
John Milton
#90. But now my task is smoothly done, I can fly, or I can run Quickly to the green earth's end, Where the bow'd welkin slow doth bend, And from thence can soar as soon To the corners of the Moon.
John Milton
#91. The best apology against false accusers is silence.
John Milton
#92. So heavenly love shall outdo hellish hate,
Giving to death, and dying to redeem,
So dearly to redeem what hellish hate
So easily destroy'd, and still destroys,
In those who, when they may, accept not grace.
John Milton
#93. So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost;Evil,be thou my good.
John Milton
#94. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
John Milton
#95. God is decreeing to begin some newand great period in his Church, even to the reforming of Reformation itself. What does he then but reveal Himself to his servants, and as his manner is, first to his Englishmen?
John Milton
#96. The sacred influence of light appears.
John Milton
#97. And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons.
John Milton
#98. There is no truth sure enough to justify persecution.
John Milton
#99. Thus with the year
Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine.
John Milton
#100. All is not lost, the unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and the courage never to submit or yield.
John Milton
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