John Milton Quotes
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Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows.
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How gladly would I meet mortality, my sentence, and be earth in sensible! How glad would lay me down, as in my mother's lap! There I should rest, and sleep secure.
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O madness to think use of strongest wines And strongest drinks our chief support of health, When God with these forbidden made choice to rear His mighty champion, strong above compare, Whose drink was only from the liquid brook.
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Fear of change perplexes monarchs.
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This manner of writing wherein knowing myself inferior to myself? I have the use, as I may account it, but of my left hand.
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[Rhyme is] but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meter; ... Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme, ... as have also long since our best English tragedies, as... trivial and of no true musical delight; which [truly] consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory.
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But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale, And love the high embowed roof, With antique pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight; Casting a dim religious light.
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Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt, Surprised by unjust force, but not inthralled; Yea, even that which mischief meant most harm Shall in the happy trial prove most glory.
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Let no man seek Henceforth to be foretold that shall befall Him or his children.
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Virtue that wavers is not virtue.
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Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son
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The pious and just honoring of ourselves may be thought the fountainhead from whence every laudable and worthy enterprise issues forth.
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I call a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.
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Swinish gluttony never looks to heaven amidst its gorgeous feast; but with besotted, base ingratitude, cravens and blasphemes his feeder.
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Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.
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Hail, holy light! offspring of heaven firstborn! Or of th' eternal co-eternal beam, May I express thee unblam'd? since God is light And never but in unapproached light Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate!
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Sometime let gorgeous TragedyIn sceptred pall come sweeping by,Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line,Or the tale of Troy divine.
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Virtue hath no tongue to check vice's pride.
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Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with theeJest, and youthful jollity,Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,Nods and becks and wreathèd smiles.
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Hide me from day's garish eye,While the bee with honied thigh,That at her flowery work doth sing,And the waters murmuringWith such consort as they keep,Entice the dewy-feathered sleep.
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The first and wisest of them all professed To know this only, that he nothing knew.
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Consider first, that great or bright infers not excellence.
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The great Emathian conqueror bid spareThe house of Pindarus, when temple and towerWent to the ground.
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A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of fire. Thither by harpy-footed Furies hal'd, At certain revolutions all the damn'd Are brought, and feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes,-extremes by change more fierce; From beds of raging fire to starve in ice Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine Immovable, infix'd, and frozen round, Periods of time; thence hurried back to fire.