Top 782 Quotes & Sayings by John Milton - Page 3

Come to the sunset tree! The day is past and gone; The woodman's axe lies free, And the reaper's work is done.

And feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce.

Evil on itself shall back recoil.

Infinity is a dark illimitable ocean, without bound.

Love Virtue, she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime; Or, if Virtue feeble were, Heav'n itself would stoop to her.

He scarce had ceased when the superior fiend Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield Ethereal temper, massy, large and round, Behind him cast; the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening from the top of Fésolè, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe.

It is not hard for any man who hath a Bible in his hand to borrow good words and holy sayings in abundance; but to make them his own is a work of grace only from above.

The martyrs shook the powers of darkness with the irresistible power of weakness.

Gratitude bestows reverence.....changing forever how we experience life and the world.

Consider first, that great or bright infers not excellence.

how wearisom Eternity so spent in worship paid To whom we hate. Let us not then pursue By force impossible, by leave obtain'd Unacceptable, though in Heav'n, our state Of splendid vassalage, but rather seek Our own good from our selves, and from our own Live to our selves, though in this vast recess, Free, and to none accountable, preferring Hard liberty before the easie yoke Of servile Pomp

A bevy of fair women.

Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony.

Where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes, That comes to all.

But peaceful was the night Wherein the Prince of Light His reign of peace upon the earth began.

Solitude is sometimes the best society.

The virtuous mind that ever walks attended By a strong siding champion, Conscience.

The great creator from his work returned Magnificent, his six days' work, a world.

The Saviour who flitted before the patriarchs through the fog of the old dispensation, and who spake in time past to the fathers by the prophets, articulate but unseen, is the same Saviour who, on the open heights of the Gospel, and in the abundant daylight of this New Testament, speaks to us. Still all along it is the same Jesus, and that Bible is from beginning to end all of it, the word of Christ.

My heart contains of good, wise, just, the perfect shape.

Meanwhile the Adversary of God and man, Satan with thoughts inflamed of highest design, Puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of hell Explores his solitary flight.

My sentence is for open war.

Most men admire Virtue who follow not her lore.

So may'st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop Into thy mother's lap.

Time will run back and fetch the Age of Gold.

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

This is the month, and this the happy morn, wherein the Son of heaven's eternal King, of wedded Maid and Virgin Mother born, our great redemption from above did bring.

In God's intention, a meet and happy conversation is the chiefest and noblest end of marriage.

In naked beauty most adorned.

Meadows trim with daisies pied, Shallow brooks and rivers wide Towers and battlements it sees Bosom'd high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some beauty lies, The cynosure of neighboring eyes.

Who, as they sung, would take the prison'd soul And lap it in Elysium.

Tears such as angels weep.

If it come to prohibiting, there is aught more likely to be prohibited than truth itself.

No mighty trance, or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

O fairest of creation, last and best Of all God's works, creature in whom excelled Whatever can to sight or thought be formed, Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet! How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost, Defaced, deflow'red, and now to death devote? Paradise Lost

Man hath his daily work of body or mind Appointed.

Of four infernal rivers that disgorge/ Into the burning Lake their baleful streams;/Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,/Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;/Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud/ Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon/ Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage./ Far off from these a slow and silent stream,/ Lethe the River of Oblivion rolls/ Her wat'ry Labyrinth whereof who drinks,/ Forthwith his former state and being forgets,/ Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.

Or if Virtue feeble were, Heav'n itself would stoop to her.

I sat me down to watch upon a bank With ivy canopied and interwove With flaunting honeysuckle.

Fairest of stars, last in the train of night, If better thou belong not to the dawn.

Where more is meant than meets the ear.

Death Grinn'd horrible a ghastly smile, to hear His famine should be fill'd.

Me miserable! Which way shall I fly Infinite wrath and infinite despair? Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep, Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide, To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence.

But hail thou Goddess sage and holy, Hail, divinest Melancholy, Whose saintly visage is too bright To hit the sense of human sight, And therefore to our weaker view O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue.

Who can enjoy alone? Or all enjoying what contentment find?

Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.

As in an organ from one blast of wind To many a row of pipes the soundboard breathes.

So he with difficulty and labour hard Mov'd on, with difficulty and labour he.

More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchang'd To hoarse or mute, though fall'n on evil days, On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues.

As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of good and evil?

And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.

Our reason is our law.

My latest found, Heaven's last, best gift, my ever new delight!

There swift return Diurnal, merely to officiate light Round this opacous earth, this punctual spot.

Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam.

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.

No institution which does not continually test its ideals, techniques and measure of accomplishment can claim real vitality.

Antichrist is Mammon's son.