100 Quotes by John Milton
John Milton, a towering figure of English literature from the 17th century, is best known for his epic masterpiece "Paradise Lost." Born in 1608, Milton's life and work were deeply intertwined with the tumultuous political and religious landscape of his time. Despite losing his eyesight, Milton's literary vision remained unparalleled. "Paradise Lost" stands as a magnum opus, a poetic exploration of humanity's fall from grace, its defiance against divine authority, and the intricacies of evil. Milton's innovative use of blank verse and his exploration of complex theological and philosophical concepts have cemented his place in the literary canon. His other works, like "Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes," further demonstrate his command over narrative and poetic form. Beyond his literary achievements, Milton's staunch advocacy for freedom of expression in his writings like "Areopagitica" played a significant role in shaping modern notions of free speech and civil liberties. His legacy endures as a testament to the power of the written word to challenge norms, question authority, and ignite intellectual discourse.
John Milton Quotes
Solitude sometimes is best society. (Meaning)
Where no hope is left, is left no fear. (Meaning)
Hard are the ways of truth, and rough to walk. (Meaning)
Every cloud has a silver lining. (Meaning)
A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit. (Meaning)
Better to reign in hell than serve in heav'n. (Meaning)
He who destroys a good book kills reason itself. (Meaning)
Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light. (Meaning)
Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity. (Meaning)
The childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day. (Meaning)
Luck is the residue of design. (Meaning)
Dark with excessive bright. (Meaning)
Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n. (Meaning)
Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe. (Meaning)
Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind. (Meaning)
Time will run back and fetch the Age of Gold. (Meaning)
Such joy ambition finds. (Meaning)
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy. (Meaning)
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie. (Meaning)
Freely we serve, because freely we love. (Meaning)
What hath night to do with sleep? (Meaning)
Peace hath her victories, no less renowned than War. (Meaning)
To be weak is miserable, Doing or suffering. (Meaning)
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil. (Meaning)
What is strength without a double share of wisdom? (Meaning)
For what can war, but endless war, still breed? (Meaning)
Tears such as angels weep. (Meaning)
Solitude is sometimes best society. (Meaning)
Part of my soul I seek thee, and claim thee my other half (Meaning)
My sentence is for open war. (Meaning)
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence. (Meaning)
Hide me from day's garish eye. (Meaning)
Such sober certainty of waking bliss. (Meaning)
Yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible. (Meaning)
Time is the subtle thief of youth. (Meaning)
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell. (Meaning)
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. (Meaning)
Our torments also may in length of time Become our Elements. (Meaning)
Methought I saw my late espoused saint. (Meaning)
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed. (Meaning)
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty. (Meaning)
Abash'd the Devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is. (Meaning)
Which, if not victory, is yet revenge. (Meaning)
Calm of mind, all passion spent. (Meaning)
This horror will grow mild, this darkness light. (Meaning)
They also serve who only stand and wait. (Meaning)
God is thy law, thou mine. (Meaning)
Temper justice with mercy. (Meaning)
With thee conversing I forget all time. (Meaning)
For so I created them free and free they must remain. (Meaning)
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell. (Meaning)
Evil, be thou my good. (Meaning)
Imparadis'd in one another's arms. (Meaning)
Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heav'n. (Meaning)
God shall be all in all. (Meaning)
Farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear (Meaning)
Courage never to submit of yield. (Meaning)
New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ Large. (Meaning)
Forget thyself to marble. (Meaning)
Hail holy light, offspring of heav'n firstborn! (Meaning)
All hell broke loose. (Meaning)
What is dark within me, illumine. (Meaning)
To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new. (Meaning)
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (Meaning)
Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth. (Meaning)
The end of all learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love and imitate Him.
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence.
Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.
He who reigns within himself and rules passions, desires, and fears is more than a king.
He who destroys a good book kills reason itself.
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.
There is nothing that making men rich and strong but that which they carry inside of them. True wealth is of the heart, not of the hand.
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.
I sat me down to watch upon a bank With ivy canopied and interwove With flaunting honeysuckle.
None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license.
Better to reign in hell than serve in heav'n.
When we speak of knowing God, it must be understood with reference to man's limited powers of comprehension. God, as He really is, is far beyond man's imagination, let alone understanding. God has revealed only so much of Himself as our minds can conceive and the weakness of our nature can bear.
Where no hope is left, is left no fear.
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
Gratitude bestows reverence.....changing forever how we experience life and the world.
No mighty trance, or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
Solitude sometimes is best society.
The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven.
Innocence, Once Lost, Can Never Be Regained. Darkness, Once Gazed Upon, Can Never Be Lost.
All is not lost, the unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and the courage never to submit or yield.
Let us no more contend, nor blame each other, blamed enough elsewhere, but strive, In offices of love, how we may lighten each other's burden.
Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity.
A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit.
Freely we serve, because freely we love.
To be blind is not miserable; not to be able to bear blindness, that is miserable.
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest birds.
Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep.
Loneliness is the first thing which God's eye named not good.
Nothing profits more than self-esteem, grounded on what is just and right.
Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye, in every gesture dignity and love.
There is no learned man but will confess be hath much profited by reading controversies,--his senses awakened, his judgment sharpened, and the truth which he holds firmly established. If then it be profitable for him to read, why should it not at least be tolerable and free for his adversary to write? In logic they teach that contraries laid together, more evidently appear; it follows then, that all controversy being permitted, falsehood will appear more false, and truth the more true; which must needs conduce much to the general confirmation of an implicit truth.
Knowledge forbidden? Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord Envy them that? Can it be sin to know, Can it be death? And do they only stand By ignorance? Is that their happy state, The proof of their obedience and their faith? O fair foundation laid whereon to build Their ruin!
Beauty is God's handwriting-a wayside sacrament.
Believe and be confirmed.
Luck is the residue of design.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
The whole freedom of man consists either in spiritual or civil liberty.
Revenge, at first though sweet, Bitter ere long back on itself recoils.
Beauty is nature's brag, and must be shown in courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, where most may wonder at the workmanship.
In those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.
Solitude is sometimes best society.
Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.
Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n.
"The virtuous mind that ever walks attended
By a strong siding champion, Conscience."
The best apology against false accusers is silence.
The childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day.
Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind.
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.
The stars, that nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps with everlasting oil, give due light to the misled and lonely traveller.
To be weak is miserable, Doing or suffering.
Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows.
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.
For neither man nor angel can discern hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible, except to God alone.
Antichrist is Mammon's son.
What hath night to do with sleep?
Time will run back and fetch the Age of Gold.
Biochemically, love is just like eating large amounts of chocolate.
To live a life half dead, a living death.
Solitude is sometimes the best society.
Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam.
It is Chastity, my brother. She that has that is clad in complete steel.
Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.
Anarchy is the sure consequence of tyranny; for no power that is not limited by laws can ever be protected by them.
What better can we do than prostrate fall before Him reverent, and there confess humbly our faults, and pardon beg with tears watering the ground?
The martyrs shook the powers of darkness with the irresistible power of weakness.
Most men admire Virtue who follow not her lore.
In naked beauty most adorned.
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.
You can make hell out of heaven and heaven out of hell. It's all in the mind.
I will not deny but that the best apology against false accusers is silence and sufferance, and honest deeds set against dishonest words.
"Hope elevates, and joy
Brightens his crest."
What wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian.
If it come to prohibiting, there is aught more likely to be prohibited than truth itself.
Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.
What is strength without a double share of wisdom?
God made thee perfect, not immutable.
And if by prayer Incessant I could hope to change the will Of Him who all things can, I would not cease To weary Him with my assiduous cries.
Midnight brought on the dusky hour Friendliest to sleep and silence.
In God's intention, a meet and happy conversation is the chiefest and noblest end of marriage.
"Where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes,
That comes to all."
My sentence is for open war.
Beauty is Nature's coin, must not be hoarded, But must be current, and the good thereof Consists in mutual and partaken bliss.
For liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands.
Apt words have power to suage the tumors of a troubled mind.
Not to know me argues yourselves unknown.
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.
But pain is perfect misery, the worst Of evils, and excessive, overturns All patience.
Who can enjoy alone? Or all enjoying what contentment find?
Prudence is the virtue by which we discern what is proper to do under various circumstances in time and place.
For what can war, but endless war, still breed?
Nor from hell One step no more than from himself can fly By change of place.
When complaints are freely heard, deeply considered and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men look for.
So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost;Evil,be thou my good.
Peace hath her victories, no less renowned than War.
Goodness thinks no ill Where no ill seems.
Necessity and chance Approach not me, and what I will is fate.
Danger will wink on opportunity.
"And feel by turns the bitter change. Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce."
My heart contains of good, wise, just, the perfect shape.
Consider first, that great or bright infers not excellence.
Lords are lordliest in their wine.
Come to the sunset tree! The day is past and gone; The woodman's axe lies free, And the reaper's work is done.
A bevy of fair women.
"As in an organ from one blast of wind. To many a row of pipes the soundboard breathes."
Hard are the ways of truth, and rough to walk.
Confidence imparts a wonderful inspiration to the possessor.
I will not allow my daughters to learn foreign languages because one tongue is sufficient for a woman.
This is servitude, To serve the unwise.
Reason is also choice.
"Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou livest,
Live well; how long, or short, permit to Heaven."
"Retiring from the popular noise, I seek
This unfrequented place to find some ease."
Our two first parents, yet the only two Of mankind, in the happy garden placed, Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love, Uninterrupted joy, unrivalled love In blissful solitude.
Contemplation is wisdom's best nurse.
Part of my soul I seek thee, and claim thee my other half
And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons.
Evil on itself shall back recoil.
Suffering for truth's sake Is fortitude to highest victory, And to the faithful death the gate of life.
It is not hard for any man who hath a Bible in his hand to borrow good words and holy sayings in abundance; but to make them his own is a work of grace only from above.
Joking decides great things, Stronger and better oft than earnest can.
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.
Few sometimes may know, when thousands err.
Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.
Let us seek Death, or he not found, supply With our own hands his office on ourselves; Why stand we longer shivering under fears, That show no end but death, and have the power, Of many ways to die the shortest choosing, Destruction with destruction to destroy.
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.
As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of good and evil?
Hell has no benefits, only torture.
Fear of change perplexes monarchs.
But peaceful was the night Wherein the Prince of Light His reign of peace upon the earth began.
He that hath light within their own breast, may sit in the centre and enjoy bright day.
Infinity is a dark illimitable ocean, without bound.
The great creator from his work returned Magnificent, his six days' work, a world.
Wherefore did he [God] create passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these rightly tempered are the very ingredients of virtue?
For truth is strong next to the Almighty. She needs no policies or stratagems or licensings to make her victorious. These are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power.
Fairest of stars, last in the train of night, If better thou belong not to the dawn.
And add to these retired Leisure, That in trim gardens take his pleasure.
There is no truth sure enough to justify persecution.
― John Milton Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
