Works By John Milton

"Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam."

"Where there is much desire to learn, here of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making."

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

"He who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have attained the utmost prospect of reformation that the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us, till we come to beatific vision, that man by this very opinion declares that he is yet far short of truth."

"A man may be a heretic in the truth, and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy."

"There is yet behind of what I purposed to lay open, the incredible loss and detriment that this plot of licensing puts us to; more than if some enemy at sea should stop up all our havens and ports and creeks, it hinders and retards the importation of our richest merchandise, truth."

"Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopolized and traded in by tickets and statutes and standards. We must not think to make a staple commodity of all the knowledge in the land, to mark and license it like our broadcloth and our woolpacks."

"Lords and commons of England, consider what Nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point, the highest that human capacity can soar to."

"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."

"All is best, though we oft doubt, What the unsearchable dispose Of highest Wisdom brings about."

"We should be wary...what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre; whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself, slays an immortality rather than a life."

"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, And as an ev'ning dragon came, Assailant on the perched roosts And nests in order rang'd Of tame villatic fowl. So Virtue, given for lost, Depressed and overthrown, as seemed, Like that self-begotten bird In the Arabian woods embost, That no second knows nor 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."

"The way to know were not to see, but taste."

"He’s gone, and who knows how he may report Thy words by adding fuel to the flame?"

"Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt, Dispraise, or blame, nothing but well and fair, And what may quiet us in a death so noble."

"Fame, if not double-faced, is double-mouthed, And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds; On both his wings, one black, the other white, Bears greatest names in his wild airy flight."

"My race of glory run, and race of shame, And I shall shortly be with them at rest."

"Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power, After offense returning, to regain Love once possessed."

"Apt words have power to suage The tumors of a troubled mind."

"Promise was that I Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver; Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves, Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke."

"The sun to me is dark And silent as the moon, When she deserts the night, Hid in her vacant interlunar cave."

"Wisest men Have erred, and by bad women been deceived."

"Love-quarrels oft in pleasing concord end; Not wedlock-treachery."

"The first and wisest of them all professed To know this only, that he nothing knew."

"Socrates... Whom well inspired the oracle pronounced Wisest of men."

"Who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior, (And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?) Uncertain and unsettled still remains, Deep versed in books, and shallow in himself."

"The olive grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long."

"Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence."

"Thence to the famous orators repair, Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence Wielded at will that fierce democratie, Shook the arsenal, and fulmin'd over Greece, To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne."

"O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hope of day!"

"To live a life half dead, a living death."

"Ran on embattled armies clad in iron, And, weaponless himself, Made arms ridiculous."

"Just are the ways of God, And justifiable to men; Unless there be who think not God at all."

"What boots it at one gate to make defense, And at another to let in the foe?"

"But who is this, what thing of sea or land? Female of sex it seems, That so bedecked, ornate, and gay, Comes this way sailing Like a stately ship Of Tarsus, bound for th' isles Of Javan or Gadire, With all her bravery on, and tackle trim, Sails filled, and streamers waving, Courted by all the winds that hold them play; An amber scent of odorous perfume Her harbinger?"

"Dalila: In argument with men a woman ever Goes by the worse, whatever be her cause. Samson: For want of words, no doubt, or lack of breath!"

"As children gath'ring pebbles on the shore. Or if I would delight my private hours With music or with poem, where so soon As in our native language can I find That solace?"

"Boast not of what thou would'st have done, but do What then thou would'st."

"For evil news rides post, while good news baits."

"Suspense in news is torture."

"Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreath'd."

"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. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, 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. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse."

"Syene, and where the shadow both way falls, Meroe, Nilotic isle."

"Who shall silence all the airs and madrigals that whisper softness in chambers?"

"The first of all Commandments, Thou shalt worship The Lord thy God, and only him shalt serve;"

"They err who count it glorious to subdue By Conquest far and wide, to over-run Large Countries, and in field great Battels win,"

"Of whom to be disprais'd were no small praise."

"Elephants endors'd with towers."

"The childhood shows the man, As morning shows the day. Be famous, then, By wisdom; as thy empire must extend, So let extend thy mind o'er all the world In knowledge; all things in it comprehend."

"Till morning fair Came forth with pilgrim steps in amice gray."