John Milton - Virtue Quotes

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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
If at great things thou would'st arrive, Get riches first, get wealth, and treasure heap, Not difficult, if thou hearken to me; Riches are mine, fortune is in my hand, They whom I favor thrive in wealth amain, While virtue, valor, wisdom, sit in want.

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
Wealth and honours, which most men pursue, easily change masters; they desert to the side which excels in virtue, industry, and endurance of toil, and they abandon the slothful.

John Milton
Next, to make them expert in the usefullest points of grammar; and withal to season them and win them early to the love of virtue and true labour, ere any flattering seducement or vain principle seize them wandering, some easy and delightful book of education would be read to them; whereof the Greeks have store, as Cebes, Plutarch, and other Socratic discourses.

John Milton
And what is faith, love, virtue unassayed Alone, without exterior help sustained?

John Milton
Extol not riches then, the toil of fools,
The wise man's cumbrance, if not snare, more apt
To slacken virtue, and abate her edge,
Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise.

John Milton
I hate when vice can bolt her arguments,
And virtue has no tongue to check her pride.

John Milton
The conquer'd, also, and enslaved by war, Shall, with their freedom lost, all virtue lose.

John Milton
Virtue that wavers is not virtue, but vice revolted from itself, and after a while returning. The actions of just and pious men do not darken in their middle course.

John Milton
But he, though blind of sight,
Despised, and thought extinguished quite,
With inward eyes illuminated,
His fiery virtue roused
From under ashes into sudden flame,
[...]
So Virtue, given for lost,
Depressed and overthrown, as seemed,
Like that self-begotten bird
In the Arabian woods embost,
That no second knows now third,
And lay erewhile a holocaust,
From out her ashy womb now teemed,
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
When most unactive deemed;
And, though her body die, her fame survives,
A secular bird, ages of lives.

John Milton
Virtue could see to do what Virtue would By her own radiant light, though sun and moon Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, Where, with her best nurse Contemplation, She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings.

John Milton
Hear all ye angels, progeny of light,
Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers.

John Milton
Her virtue and the conscience of her worth,
That would be woo'd, and not unsought be won.

John Milton
Madam, methinks I see him living yet;
So well your words his noble virtues praise,
That all both judge you to relate them true,
And to possess them, honour'd Margaret.

John Milton
I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.

John Milton
Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt,
Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled.

John Milton
Inflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.

John Milton
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
Abash'd the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is, and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely.

John Milton
Men of most renowned virtue have sometimes by transgressing most truly kept the law.

John Milton
Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely: and pined his loss

John Milton
Most men admire Virtue who follow not her lore.

John Milton