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John Milton Quotes

1608–1674 England

John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is most famous for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), written in blank verse.

England
Essayists
Philosophers
Poets
Theologians

Also known as: Milton, Milton, John, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce

Random John Milton quote

502 quotes

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep.

Darkness now rose,
As daylight sunk, and brought in low'ring Night
Her shadowy offspring.

Paradise Regained (1671)

And in their motions harmony divine
So smoothes her charming tones, that God's own ear
Listens delighted.

Millions of spiritual beings walk the earth unseen,
Both when we wake, and when we sleep.

Good luck befriend thee, Son; for at thy birth
The fairy ladies danced upon the hearth.

Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones,
Forget not.

And the gilded car of day,
His glowing axle doth allay
In the steep Atlantic stream.

Comus (1637)

Heaven open'd wide
Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound
On golden hinges moving.

The gates that now
Stood open wide, belching outrageous flame
Far into Chaos, since the fiend pass'd through.

For what thou art is mine:
Our state cannot be sever'd; we are one,
One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.

Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould
Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment?

Comus (1637)

Hast thou betrayed my credulous innocence
With vizor'd falsehood and base forgery?

Comus (1637)

I on the other side
Us'd no ambition to commend my deeds;
The deeds themselves, though mute, spoke loud the doer.

Samson Agonistes (1671)

Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.

Thou, in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a life-long monument.

Then lies him down the lubber fiend,
And stretched out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength.

L'Allegro (1631)

Witness the Streets of Sodom, and that night
In Gibeah, when the hospitable door
Exposed a matron, to avoid worse rape.

A limbo large and broad, since call'd
The Paradise of Fools to few unknown.

When the scourge
Inexorable, and the torturing hour
Calls us to penance.

And ladies of the Hesperides, that seemed
Fairer than feign'd of old.

Paradise Regained (1671)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John Milton (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.