Top 782 Quotes & Sayings by John Milton - Page 2

Let us no more contend, nor blame each other, blamed enough elsewhere, but strive, In offices of love, how we may lighten each other's burden.

Lords are lordliest in their wine.

Beauty is God's handwriting-a wayside sacrament.

Few sometimes may know, when thousands err.

For 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.

Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam.

All is not lost, the unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and the courage never to submit or yield.

Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind.

Retiring from the popular noise, I seek This unfrequented place to find some ease.

Solitude is sometimes best society.

Danger will wink on opportunity.

I will not allow my daughters to learn foreign languages because one tongue is sufficient for a woman.

Freely we serve, because freely we love.

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

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.

What hath night to do with sleep?

Reason is also choice.

None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license.

Loneliness is the first thing which God's eye named not good.

Believe and be confirmed.

Prudence is the virtue by which we discern what is proper to do under various circumstances in time and place.

And if by prayer Incessant I could hope to change the will Of Him who all things can, I would not cease To weary Him with my assiduous cries.

What is strength without a double share of wisdom?

What better can we do than prostrate fall before Him reverent, and there confess humbly our faults, and pardon beg with tears watering the ground?

Hell has no benefits, only torture.

To be weak is miserable, Doing or suffering.

Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest birds.

I will not deny but that the best apology against false accusers is silence and sufferance, and honest deeds set against dishonest words.

The whole freedom of man consists either in spiritual or civil liberty.

Fear of change perplexes monarchs.

Wherefore did he [God] create passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these rightly tempered are the very ingredients of virtue?

Revenge, at first though sweet, Bitter ere long back on itself recoils.

Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n.

He that hath light within their own breast, may sit in the centre and enjoy bright day.

Midnight brought on the dusky hour Friendliest to sleep and silence.

Now the bright morning-star, Day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose. Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire Mirth, and youth, and warm desire! Woods and groves are of thy dressing; Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing. Thus we salute thee with our early song, And welcome thee, and wish thee long.

And add to these retired Leisure, That in trim gardens take his pleasure.

For stories teach us, that liberty sought out of season, in a corrupt and degenerate age, brought Rome itself to a farther slavery: for liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands: neither is it completely given, but by them who have the happy skill to know what is grievance and unjust to a people, and how to remove it wisely; what good laws are wanting, and how to frame them substantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad the curb which they need.

Nor from hell One step no more than from himself can fly By change of place.

But pain is perfect misery, the worst Of evils, and excessive, overturns All patience.

Hope elevates, and joy Brightens his crest.

Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.

Biochemically, love is just like eating large amounts of chocolate.

Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou livest, Live well; how long, or short, permit to Heaven.

For neither man nor angel can discern hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible, except to God alone.

Part of my soul I seek thee, and claim thee my other half

That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness.

The debt immense of endless gratitude, So burthensome, still paying, still to owe; Forgetful what from him I still receivd, And understood not that a grateful mind By owing owes not, but still pays, at once Indebted and dischargd; what burden then?

Suffering for truth's sake Is fortitude to highest victory, And to the faithful death the gate of life.

Knowledge forbidden? Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord Envy them that? Can it be sin to know, Can it be death? And do they only stand By ignorance? Is that their happy state, The proof of their obedience and their faith? O fair foundation laid whereon to build Their ruin!

The power of Kings and Magistrates is nothing else, but what is only derivative, transferrd and committed to them in trust from the People, to the Common good of them all, in whom the power yet remaines fundamentally, and cannot be takn from them, without a violation of thir natural birthright.

What wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian.

This is servitude, To serve the unwise.

For truth is strong next to the Almighty. She needs no policies or stratagems or licensings to make her victorious. These are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power.

That practis'd falsehood under saintly shew, Deep malice to conceal, couch'd with revenge.

The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.

Our two first parents, yet the only two Of mankind, in the happy garden placed, Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love, Uninterrupted joy, unrivalled love In blissful solitude.

Not to know me argues yourselves unknown.

It is Chastity, my brother. She that has that is clad in complete steel.

Such sober certainty of waking bliss.