All Quotes

"My dancing days are done."

"Beggars must be no choosers."

"Who has not known ill fortune, never knew Himself, or his own virtue."

"What proves the hero truly great, Is never, never to despair."

"Rule Britannia, rule the waves: Britons never will be slaves."

"And you shall find the greatest enemy A man can have is his prosperity."

"But years hath done this wrong, To make me write too much, and live too long."

"Folly in youth is sin, in age 'tis madness."

"For 'tis some ease our sorrows to reveal, If they to whom we shall impart our woes, Seem but to feel a part of what we feel, And meet us with a sigh, but at the close."

"Princes in this case Do hate the traitor, though they love the treason."

"The absent danger greater still appears; Less fears he who is near the thing he fears."

"Pity is sworn servant unto love; And thus be sure, wherever it begin To make the way, it lets the master in."

"Man is a creature of a wilful head, And hardly driven is, but eas'ly led."

"Ah! 'tis the silent rhetoric of a look, That works the league betwixt the states of hearts."

"To spend the time luxuriously Becomes not men of worth."

"Love is a sickness full of woes, All remedies refusing; A plant that with most cutting grows, Most barren with best using. Why so? More we enjoy it, more it dies; If not enjoy’d, it sighing cries— Heigh ho!Love is a torment of the mind, A tempest everlasting; And Jove hath made it of a kind Not well, nor full nor fasting. Why so? More we enjoy it, &c."

"Sacred on earth; designed a saint above!"

"The fairest flower that ever saw the light."

"Men do not weigh the stalk for what it was, When once they find her flow’r, her glory, pass."

"I that have loved thee thus before thou fadest, My faith shall wax, when thou art in thy waning. The world shall find this miracle in me, That fire can burn when all the matter's spent."

"Thou may’st repent that thou hast scorn’d my tears, When Winter snows upon thy sable hairs."

"For women grieve to think they must be old."

"The land of scholars and the nurse of arms."

"For just experience tells; in every soil, That those that think must govern those that toil."

"Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law."

"Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel."

"'Tis not a life, 'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away."

"Minions too great argue a King too weak."

"Forc'd from their homes, a melancholy train, To traverse climes beyond the western main; Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around, And Niagara stuns with thundering sound."

"The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents."

"Litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees."

"Vain, very vain, my weary search to find That bliss which only centers in the mind."

"He touch'd the tender stops of various quills, With eager thought warbling his Doric lay."

"At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue: Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new."

"I shall detain you no longer in the demonstration of what we should not do, but straight conduct ye to a hillside, where I will point ye out the right path of a virtuous and noble education; laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect and melodious sounds on every side that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming."

"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."

"Ornate rhetoric thought out of the rule of Plato... To which poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less subtle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate."

"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."

"Attic tragedies of stateliest and most regal argument."

"And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the highth of this great Argument I may assert th' Eternal Providence, And justifie the wayes of God to men."

"The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n."

"To reign is worth ambition though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven."

"They looking back, all th' Eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat, Wav'd over by that flaming Brand, the Gate With dreadful Faces throng'd and fierie Armes: Som natural tears they drop'd, but wip'd them soon; The World was all before them, where to choose Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide: They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow, Through EDEN took thir solitarie way."

"Be frustrate, all ye stratagems of Hell, And devilish machinations come to nought."

"Behold the kings of the Earth how they oppress Thy chosen, to what highth thir pow'r unjust They have exalted, and behind them cast All fear of thee, arise and vindicate Thy Glory, free thy people from thir yoke"

"My rising is thy fall"

"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 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."

"Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world."

"In the sure and flawless perfection of his rhythm and diction he is as admirable as Virgil or Dante, and in this respect he is unique amongst us. No one else in English literature and art possesses the like distinction. Thomson, Cowper, Wordsworth, all of them good poets who have studied Milton, followed Milton, adopted his form, fail in their diction and rhythm if we try them by that high standard of excellence maintained by Milton constantly. From style really high and pure Milton never departs; their departures from it are frequent."

"Milton, from one end of Paradise Lost to the other, is in his diction and rhythm constantly a great artist in the great style... That Milton, of all our English race, is by his diction and rhythm the one artist of the highest rank in the great style whom we have; this I take as requiring no discussion, this I take as certain."