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Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.
- Yet some there be that by due steps aspire
- To lay their just hands on that golden key
- That opes the palace of Eternity.
- Long is the way
- And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.
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, Areopagitica
None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but licence.
JOHN MILTON, Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
- The mind is its own place, and in itself
- Can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
Love-quarrels oft in pleasing concord end.
JOHN MILTON, Samson Agonistes
- Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt,
- Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled.
- O thievish Night,
- Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end,
- In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars,
- That nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps
- With everlasting oil, to give due light
- To the misled and lonely traveller?
- Peace hath her victories
- No less renowned than war.
JOHN MILTON, To the Lord General Cromwell, May 1652
- Beauty is Nature's coin, must not be hoarded,
- But must be current, and the good thereof
- Consists in mutual and partaken bliss.
- For neither man nor angel can discern
- Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks
- Invisible, except to God alone.
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
- Who overcomes
- By force, hath overcome but half his foe.
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
- Ofttimes nothing profits more
- Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right
- Well managed.
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
- Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
- Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep.
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
- Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source
- Of human offspring, sole propriety,
- In Paradise of all things common else.
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
- The oracles are dumb,
- No voice or hideous hum
- Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
- Apollo from his shrine
- Can no more divine,
- With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
- No nightly trance or breathèd spell,
- Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
- Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
- With charm of earliest birds.
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
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, Areopagitica
- Good, the more
- Communicated, more abundant grows.
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter.
JOHN MILTON, Areopagitica
- What if earth
- Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein
- Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
- All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear,
- All intellect, all sense, and as they please
- They limb themselves, and colour, shape, or size,
- Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare.
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
- Towered cities please us then,
- And the busy hum of men.
I will point ye out the right path of a virtuous and noble Education; laborious indeed at first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect, and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming.
JOHN MILTON, Of Education
For what can war but endless war still breed?
JOHN MILTON, On the Lord General Fairfax
- Revenge, at first though sweet,
- Bitter ere long back on itself recoils.
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.
JOHN MILTON, Areopagitica
- Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power,
- After offence returning, to regain
- Love once possess'd.
JOHN MILTON, Samson Agonistes
- Go in thy native innocence, rely
- On what thou hast of virtue, summon all,
- For God towards thee hath done his part, do thine.
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
- The first and wisest of them all professed
- To know this only, that he nothing knew.
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Regained
- Under his forming hands a creature grew,
- Man-like, but different sex; so lovely fair
- That what seemed fair in all the world, seemed now
- Mean, or in her summed up, in her contained,
- And in her looks; which from that time infus'd
- Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before,
- And into all things from her air inspir'd
- The spirit of love and amorous delight.
- She disappear'd, and left me dark; I wak'd
- To find her, or for her ever to deplore
- Her loss, and other pleasures abjure:
- When out of hope, behold her, not far off,
- Such as I saw her in my dream, adorn'd
- With what all Earth or Heaven could bestow
- To make her amiable: On she came,
- Led by her Heavenly Maker, though unseen,
- And guided by his voice; nor uninform'd
- Of nuptial sanctity, and marriage rites:
- Grace was in her steps, heaven in her eye,
- In every gesture dignity and love.
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
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