John Milton > Quotes

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“What hath night to do with sleep?”
― John Milton, 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.”
― John Milton, Areopagitica

“Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Solitude sometimes is best society.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Freely we serve
Because we freely love, as in our will
To love or not; in this we stand or fall.”
― 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, Paradise Lost

“All is not lost, the unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and the courage never to submit or yield.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Me miserable! Which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.”
― John Milton, 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.”
― John Milton

“Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep...”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Innocence, Once Lost, Can Never Be Regained. Darkness, Once Gazed Upon, Can Never Be Lost.”
― John Milton

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

“What is dark within me, illumine.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“I sung of Chaos and Eternal Night,
Taught by the heav'nly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to reascend...”
― 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

“Farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear”
― John Milton

“This horror will grow mild, this darkness light.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Into this wild Abyss/ The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave--/ Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,/ But all these in their pregnant causes mixed/ Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,/ Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain/ His dark materials to create more worlds,--/ Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend/ Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,/ Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith/ He had to cross. ”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“For so I created them free and free they must remain.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind.”
― John Milton, Comus

“Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules
Passions, desires, and fears, is more a king.”
― John Milton, Paradise Regained

“Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell. ”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

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

“How can I live without thee, how forego
Thy sweet converse, and love so dearly joined,
To live again in these wild woods forlorn?
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no, no, I feel
The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh,
Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.

However, I with thee have fixed my lot,
Certain to undergo like doom; if death
Consort with thee, death is to me as life;
So forcible within my heart I feel
The bond of nature draw me to my own,
My own in thee, for what thou art is mine;
Our state cannot be severed, we are one,
One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Knowledge forbidden?
Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord
Envy them that? Can it be a sin to know?
Can it be death?”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost