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

“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

“What hath night to do with sleep?”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

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

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

“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

“Grace was in all her steps,
heaven in her eye,
in every gesture dignity and love.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

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

“By proof we feel
Our power sufficient to disturb his Heav'n,
And with perpetual inrodes to alarm,
Though inaccessible, his fatal Throne:
Which if not Victory is yet Revenge.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

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

“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

“The end of all learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love and imitate Him.”
― John Milton

“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

“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

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

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

“Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv'st/Live well, how long or short permit to heaven.”
― 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

“As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: 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.”
― John Milton, Areopagitica

“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

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

“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

“Loneliness is the first thing which God's eye named not good.”
― John Milton

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

“O sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams
That bring to my remembrance from what state I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

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

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

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