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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

What reinforcement we may gain from hope;
If not, what resolution from despair.

Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy!

Il Penseroso (1631)

In argument with men a woman ever
Goes by the worse, whatever be her cause.

Samson Agonistes (1671)

See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds,
With joy and love triumphing.

And touch'd their golden harps, and hymning praised
God and his works.

For smiles from reason flow
To brute deny'd, and are of love the food.

Open, ye heavens, your living doors; let in
The great Creator from his work return'd
Magnificent, his six days' work, a world!

Beauty is Nature's coin, must not be hoarded,
But must be current, and the good thereof
Consists in mutual and partaken bliss.

Comus (1637)

Without his rod revers'd,
And backward mutters of dissevering power.

Comus (1637)

Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.

Il Penseroso (1631)

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days.

Yet hold it more humane, more heav'nly, first,
By winning words to conquer willing hearts,
And make persuasion do the work of fear.

Paradise Regained (1671)

Since good, the more
Communicated, more abundant grows.

The childhood shows the man,
As morning shows the day.

Paradise Regained (1671)

Thus repuls'd, our final hope
Is flat despair.

Hope elevates, and joy
Brightens his crest.

O fairest flower! no sooner blown but blasted,
Soft silken primrose fading timelessly.

In other part stood one who, at the forge
Labouring, two massy clods of iron and brass
Had melted.

These false pretexts and varnished colours failing,
Rare in thy guilt how foul must thou appear.

Samson Agonistes (1671)

Those graceful acts,
Those thousand decencies that daily flow
From all her words and actions.

Attribution

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