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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

Heard so oft
In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge
Of battle.

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

Paradise Regained (1671)

From that high mount of God whence light and shade
Spring both, the face of brightest heaven had changed
To grateful twilight.

Oft, on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off curfew sound
Over some wide-watered shore,
Swinging low with sullen roar.

Il Penseroso (1631)

Ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize.

L'Allegro (1631)

Necessity and chance
Approach not me, and what I will is fate.

None
But such as are good men can give good things,
And that which is not good, is not delicious
To a well-governed and wise appetite.

Comus (1637)

But now my task is smoothly done,
I can fly, or I can run.

Comus (1637)

Retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.

Il Penseroso (1631)

Sabean odours from the spicy shore
Of Arabie the blest.

In naked beauty more adorned
More lovely than Pandora.

Sweetest Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv'st unseen
Within thy airy shell,
By slow Meander's margent green,
And in the violet-embroidered vale.

Comus (1637)

To overcome in battle, and subdue
Nations, and bring home spoils with infinite
Man-slaughter, shall be held the highest pitch
Of human glory.

No war or battle sound
Was heard the world around.

Thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers.

Moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness.

The unsunn'd heaps
Of miser's treasures.

Comus (1637)

Such bickerings to recount, met often in these our writers, what more worth is it than to chronicle the wars of kites or crows flocking and fighting in the air?

The History of England (1670)

The gay motes that people the sunbeams.

Il Penseroso (1631)

O fairest of creation! last and best
Of all God’s works! creature in whom excell’d
Whatever can to sight or thought be form’d
Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet!

Attribution

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