John Milton Quotes

606 Sourced Quotes

Doth God exact day-labour, light denied,
I fondly ask; but patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best, his state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.

John Milton
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.

John Milton
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.

John Milton
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

John Milton
None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license.

John Milton
One sip of this will bathe the drooping spirits in delight, beyond the bliss of dreams.

John Milton
There Leviathan
Hugest of living creatures, on the deep Stretch'd like a promontory sleeps or swims,
And seems a moving land, and at his gills Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out a sea.

John Milton
Fairy elves, Whose midnight revels by a forest side Or fountain some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon Sits arbitress.

John Milton
When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling leaves
With minute drops from off the eaves.

John Milton
It was from out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world.

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

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

John Milton
Or call up him that left half told
The story of Cambuscan bold.

John Milton
That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness.

John Milton
Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source Of human offspring.

John Milton
Not that fair field
Of Enna, where Proserpin gathering flowers Herself a fairer flower by gloomy Dis Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world.

John Milton
For the air of youth,
Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reign
A melancholy damp of cold and dry
To weigh thy spirits down, and last consume
The balm of life.

John Milton
Revenge, at first though sweet, Bitter ere long back on itself recoils.

John Milton
Yet some there be that by due steps aspire
To lay their just hands on that golden key
That opes the palace of eternity.

John Milton
Fear and dull disposition, lukewarmness and sloth, are not seldom wont to cloak themselves under the affected name of moderation.

John Milton
Who overcomes
By force, hath overcome but half his foe.

John Milton
Samson hath quit himself
Like Samson, and heroically hath finished
A life heroic.

John Milton
What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
Of Attic taste?

John Milton
Innumerable as the stars of night, Or stars of morning, dewdrops which the sun Impearls on every leaf and every flower.

John Milton