John Milton Quotes: 19

• The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..

  Paradise Lost

• 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.

  Areopagitica

• Freely we serveBecause we freely love, as in our willTo love or not; in this we stand or fall.

• Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n.

  Paradise Lost

• I will not deny but that the best apology against false accusers is silence and sufferance, and honest deeds set against dishonest words.

• Farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear

• A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.

  Areopagitica

• What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,The labor of an age in pilèd stones,Or that his hallowed relics should be hidUnder a star-y-pointing pyramid?Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?

  The Complete Poetry

• Yet he who reigns within himself, and rulesPassions, desires, and fears, is more a king.

  Paradise Regained

• And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

  The Complete Poetry

• Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.

  The Complete Poetry

• Where the bright seraphim in burning rowTheir loud uplifted angel trumpets blow.

  The Complete Poetry

• Our state cannot be severed, we are one,One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.

  Paradise Lost

• Is it true, O Christ in heaven, that the highest suffer the most?That the strongest wander furthest and most hopelessly are lost?That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain?That the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of the strain?

• Here at lastWe shall be free;the Almighty hath not builtHere for his envy, will not drive us hence:Here we may reign secure, and in my choiceTo reign is worth ambition though in Hell:Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.

• And looks commercing with the skies,Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.

  L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas

• The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.

  Milton on Education, the Tractate of Education,: With Supplementary Extracts from Other Writings of Milton

• Only add Deeds to thy knowledge answerable; add faith; Add virtue, patience, temperance; add love, By name to come called charity, the soul Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loath To leave this Paradise; but shalt possess A paradise within thee, happier far.

• 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.

  Comus