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.
- See also:
- Comus (1634)
- Areopagitica (1644)
- Paradise Lost (1667, 1674)
- Paradise Regained (1671)
- Samson Agonistes (1671)
Quotes
Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping Hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more than what is false and vain,
And merely mortal dross.
- What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,
The labor of an age in pilèd stones,
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
Under a star-y-pointing pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?- On Shakespeare (1630)
- And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.- On Shakespeare (1630)
- How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!- On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-three (1631)
- Captain or Colonel, or Knight in Arms,
Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize,
If ever deed of honour did thee please,
Guard them, and him within protect from harms.- Sonnet VIII: When the Assault was Intended to the City
- The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground.- Sonnet VIII: When the Assault was intended to the City
- Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.
- Arcades (1630-1634), line 68
- Under the shady roof
Of branching elm star-proof.- Arcades (1630-1634), line 88
- Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race:
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping Hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more than what is false and vain,
And merely mortal dross.- On Time (1633–34)
- O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray
Warbl'st at eve, when all the woods are still.- Sonnet, To the Nightingale (c. 1637)
- Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven's joy,
- At a Solemn Music (c. 1637), line 1
- Where the bright seraphim in burning row
Their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow.- At a Solemn Music
- A poet soaring in the high reason of his fancies, with his garland and singing robes about him.
- The Reason of Church Government (1641), Book II, Introduction
- By labor and intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after-times, as they should not willingly let it die.
- The Reason of Church Government (1641), Book II, Introduction
- He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem.
- Apology for Smectymnuus (1642)
- His words ... like so many nimble and airy servitors trip about him at command.
- Apology for Smectymnuus (1642)
- I will not deny but that the best apology against false accusers is silence and sufferance, and honest deeds set against dishonest words.
- Apology for Smectymnuus (1642)
- So little care they of beasts to make them men, that by their sorcerous doctrine of formalities, they take the way to transform them out of Christian men into judaizing beasts. Had they but taught the land, or suffered it to be taught, as Christ would it should have been in all plenteous dispensation of the word, then the poor mechanic might have so accustomed his ear to good teaching, as to have discerned between faithful teachers and false. But now, with a most inhuman cruelty, they who have put out the people's eyes, reproach them of their blindness; just as the Pharisees their true fathers were wont, who could not endure that the people should be thought competent judges of Christ's doctrine, although we know they judged far better than those great rabbis: yet “this people,” said they, “that know not the law is accursed.”
- Apology for Smectymnuus (1642), section VIII
- Truth...never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her forth.
- The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643), Introduction
- Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live.
- The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce Preface: "TO THE PARLAMENT OF ENGLAND" (1643)
- Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam.
- The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643), Introduction. Compare: "The sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before", Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Book ii (1605)
- Men of most renowned virtue have sometimes by transgressing most truly kept the law.
- Tetrachordon (1644–1645)
- New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ Large.
- On the new forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament (1645)
- For other things mild Heav'n a time ordains,
And disapproves that care, though wise in show,
That with superfluous burden loads the day,
And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.- To Cyriack Skinner (1646–1647)
- For such kind of borrowing as this, if it be not bettered by the borrower, among good authors is accounted Plagiarè.
- Eikonoklastes (1649), 23
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license.
- Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649)
- No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free.
- Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649)
- Peace hath her victories
No less renowned than war.- To the Lord General Cromwell (1652)
- Quoted by President Benjamin Harrison in his dedication of the Chicago Auditorium, and thereafter inscribed on the building, as reported in Dr. William Carter, "Progress in World's Peace Movement", California Outlook (1913), Vol. 14, p. 11
- To the Lord General Cromwell (1652)
- When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless.- On His Blindness (1652)
- Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.- When I Consider How My Light is Spent (Also known asOn His Blindness) (1652)
- Compare "Patience is also a form of action." Attributed to Auguste Rodin in: Leonard William Doob (1990). Hesitation: Impulsivity and Reflection. p. 124
- Non est miserum esse caecum, miserum est caecitatem non posse ferre.
- Translation: It is not miserable to be blind; it is miserable to be incapable of enduring blindness.
- Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Secunda (1654) p. 32
- Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones
Forget not.- On the Late Massacre in Piedmont (1655)
- Cyriack, whose Grandsire on the Royal Bench
Of British Themis, with no mean applause
Pronounced and in his volumes taught our Laws,
Which others at their Bar so often wrench- To Cyriack Skinner (1655)
- Yet I argue not
Against Heav'n's hand or will, nor bate one jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up, and steer
Right onward.- To Cyriack Skinner, upon His Blindness (c. 1655)
- Of which all Europe rings from side to side.
- To Cyriack Skinner, upon His Blindness (c. 1655)
- In mirth that after no repenting draws.
- To Cyriack Skinner, upon His Blindness (c. 1655)
- Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son
- To Mr. Lawrence (1656)
- Methought I saw my late espousèd saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave.- On His Deceased Wife (c. 1658)
- But oh! as to embrace me she inclined,
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.- On His Deceased Wife (c. 1658)
- [Rhyme is] but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meter; ... Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme, ... as have also long since our best English tragedies, as... trivial and of no true musical delight; which [truly] consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory.
- Introduction to Paradise Lost Added, 1668
- 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), Book IV
- 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.
- Madam, methinks I see him living yet;
So well your words his noble virtues praise,
That all both judge you to relate them true,
And to possess them, honour'd Margaret.
- The end of learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love Him and imitate Him.
- Quote reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 364
- Such as may make thee search the coffers round.
- At a Vacation Exercise. Line 31, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
- O fairest flower! no sooner blown but blasted,
Soft silken primrose fading timelessly.- Ode on the Death of a fair Infant, dying of a Cough, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
- Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day.
- Sonnet to the Nightingale, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "That well by reason men it call may / The daisie, or els the eye of the day, / The emprise, and floure of floures all", Geoffrey Chaucer, Prologue of the Legend of Good Women, line 183
- As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye.
- On his being arrived to the Age of Twenty-three, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
- That old man eloquent.
- To the Lady Margaret Ley, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
- That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp.
- On the Detraction which followed upon my writing certain Treatises, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
- License they mean when they cry, Liberty!
For who loves that must first be wise and good.- On the Detraction which followed upon my writing certain Treatises, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
- What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
Of Attic taste?- To Mr. Lawrence
- Have hung
My dank and dropping weeds
To the stern god of sea.- Translation of Horace. Book i. Ode 5
- Beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.
- The Reason of Church Government, Introduction, Book ii
- I neither oblige the belief of other person, nor overhastily subscribe mine own. Nor have I stood with others computing or collating years and chronologies, lest I should be vainly curious about the time and circumstance of things, whereof the substance is so much in doubt. By this time, like one who had set out on his way by night, and travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at a far distance, true colours and shapes.
- The History of England, Book ii
On the Morning of Christ's Nativity (1629)
- This is the month, and this the happy morn,
Wherein the Son of Heav'n's eternal King,
Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
That He our deadly forfeit should release,
And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.- Stanza 1, line 1
- It was the winter wild
While the Heav'n-born child
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies.- Hymn, stanza 1, line 29
- No war, or battle's sound
Was heard the world around.
The idle spear and shield were high up hung.- Hymn, stanza 4, line 53
- Time will run back and fetch the Age of Gold.
- Hymn, stanza 14, line 135
- Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.
- Hymn, stanza 18, line 172
- The oracles are dumb,
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance or breathed spell
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.- Hymn, stanza 19, line 173
- From haunted spring and dale
Edged with poplar pale
The parting genius is with sighing sent.- Hymn, stanza 20, line 184
- Peor and Baälim
Forsake their temples dim.- Hymn. Line 197
L'Allegro (1631)
- Hence, loathèd Melancholy,
Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,
In Stygian cave forlorn,
'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy.- Line 1
- Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful jollity,
Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathèd smiles.- Line 25
- Sport, that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter, holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it, as you go.
On the light fantastic toe.- Line 31
- The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty.
- Line 36
- Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreprovèd pleasures free.- Line 38
- While the cock with lively din
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn door,
Stoutly struts his dames before,
Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumb'ring morn.- Line 49
- And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.- Line 67
- Meadows trim, with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide;
Towers and balements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighboring eyes.- Line 75
- Herbs, and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses.- Line 85
- And the jocund rebecks sound
To many a youth, and many a maid,
Dancing in the checkered shade.
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday.- Line 94
- Then to the spicy nut-brown ale.
- Line 100
- Then lies him down the lubber fiend,
And stretched out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength.- Line 110
- Towered cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men.- Line 117
- Ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize.- Line 121
- And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With mask, and antique pageantry,
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream.
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild,
And ever, against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse
Such as the meeting soul may pierce,
In notes with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out.- Line 127; comparable to: "Wisdom married to immortal verse", William Wordsworth, The Excursion, book vii
- Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony.- Line 143
- Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half-regained Eurydice.
These delights, if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee, I mean to live.- Line 148
Il Penseroso (1631)
- Hence vain deluding Joys,
The brood of Folly without father bred!- Line 1
- The gay motes that people the sunbeams.
- Line 8
- And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.- Line 39
- Forget thyself to marble.
- Line 42
- And join with thee, calm Peace and Quiet,
Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet.- Line 45
- And add to these retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.- Line 49
- Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy!- Line 61
- I walk unseen
On the dry smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wandering moon,
Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray
Through the heav'n's wide pathless way,
And oft, as if her head she bowed,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.- Line 65
- Oft, on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off curfew sound
Over some wide-watered shore,
Swinging low with sullen roar.- Line 73
- Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,
Far from all resort of mirth,
Save the cricket on the hearth.- Line 79
- Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy
In sceptred pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line,
Or the tale of Troy divine.- Line 97
- But, O sad Virgin, that thy power
Might raise Musaeus from his bower,
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing
Such notes as warbled to the string,
Drew Iron tears down Pluto's cheek,
And made Hell grant what Love did seek.- Line 105
- Or call up him that left half told
The story of Cambuscan bold.- Line 109
- Where more is meant than meets the ear.
- Line 120
- When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling leaves
With minute drops from off the eaves.- Line 128
- Hide me from day's garish eye,
While the bee with honied thigh,
That at her flowery work doth sing,
And the waters murmuring
With such consort as they keep,
Entice the dewy-feathered sleep.- Line 141
- And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced choir below,
In service high, and anthems clear
As may, with sweetness, through mine ear
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all heaven before mine eyes.- Line 159
- Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.- Line 173
Comus (1634)
- He that has light within his own clear breast,
May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day;
But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts,
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;
Himself is his own dungeon.- Lines 381-385
Lycidas (1637)
- Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.- Line 1
- He knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.- Line 10
- Without the meed of some melodious tear.
- Line 14
- Under the opening eyelids of the morn,
We drove afield; and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night.- Line 26
- But O the heavy change, now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone and never must return!- Line 37
- The gadding vine.
- Line 40
- Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorrèd shears,
And slits the thin-spun life.- Line 64; comparable to: "Erant quibus appetentior famæ videretur, quando etiam sapientibus cupido gloriae novissima exuitur" (Translated: "Some might consider him as too fond of fame, for the desire of glory clings even to the best of men longer than any other passion"), Tacitus, Historiae, iv. 6; said of Helvidius Priscus.
- Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.
- Line 78
- It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in th' eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.- Line 100
- Last came, and last did go,
The Pilot of the Galilean lake;
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain,
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).- Line 108
- Blind mouths! That scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook.- Line 119
- The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said;
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.- Line 123
- Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes
That on the green turf suck the honied showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freakt with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears.- Line 139
- Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world.- Line 156
- Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.
- Line 163
- For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor;
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed;
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of him that walked the waves.- Line 166
- He touch'd the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay.- Line 188
- At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.- Line 192
Tractate of Education (1644)
- The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents.
- Litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees.
- I shall detain you no longer in the demonstration of what we should not do, but straight conduct ye to a hillside, where I will point ye out the right path of a virtuous and noble education; laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect and melodious sounds on every side that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming.
- Inflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.
- Ornate rhetoric thought out of the rule of Plato... To which poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less subtle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate.
- 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.
- Attic tragedies of stateliest and most regal argument.
Paradise Lost (1667)
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Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.
- And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert th' Eternal Providence,
And justifie the wayes of God to men.- i.17-26
- The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.- i.254-255
- To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.- i.262-263
- They looking back, all th' Eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat,
Wav'd over by that flaming Brand, the Gate
With dreadful Faces throng'd and fierie Armes:
Som natural tears they drop'd, but wip'd them soon;
The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through EDEN took thir solitarie way.- x.1532-40
Paradise Regained (1671)
- Be frustrate, all ye stratagems of Hell,
And devilish machinations come to nought.- Book I: Lines 72-73
- Behold the kings of the Earth how they oppress
Thy chosen, to what highth thir pow'r unjust
They have exalted, and behind them cast
All fear of thee, arise and vindicate
Thy Glory, free thy people from thir yoke- Book II: Lines 44-48
- My rising is thy fall
- Spoke by Jesus to Satan
- Book III: Line 201
- Spoke by Jesus to Satan
Samson Agonistes (1671)
- But he, though blind of sight,
Despised, and thought extinguished quite,
With inward eyes illuminated,
His fiery virtue roused
From under ashes into sudden flame,
[...]
So Virtue, given for lost,
Depressed and overthrown, as seemed,
Like that self-begotten bird
In the Arabian woods embost,
That no second knows nor third,
And lay erewhile a holocaust,
From out her ashy womb now teemed,
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
When most unactive deemed;
And, though her body die, her fame survives,
A secular bird, ages of lives.- Lines 1687-1692 & 1697-1707
Misattributed
- Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.
- Attributed to Milton at , , great-quotes.com, and brainyquote.com.
- Spirituality author Sarah Ban Breathnach writes, in her 1996 Simple Abundance Journal of Gratitude: "Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life (is it abundant or is it lacking?) and the world (is it friendly or is it hostile?)." A Milton quotation occurs on the same page.
Quotes about Milton
England hath need of thee… ~ William Wordsworth
- The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he Wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.
- William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793)
- Now, more than thirty years ago, when I was very young indeed, in my beginning to think about public affairs, in reading the pure writings of John Milton, I found a passage which fixed itself in my mind. This passage time has never been able to take from my memory. He says, "Yet true eloquence I find to be none but the serious and hearty love of truth." And I have endeavoured, so far as I have had the opportunity of speaking in public, to abide by that wise and weighty saying.
- John Bright, speech in Edinburgh (3 November 1868), quoted in William Robertson, Life and Times of the Right Hon. John Bright (1883), p. 456
- Paradise Regained—the work of a poet unsurpassed in any country or in any age, and a poem which I believe great authorities admit, if Paradise Lost did not exist, would be the finest in our language.
- John Bright, speech in Birmingham Town Hall (1 June 1882), quoted in William Robertson, Life and Times of the Right Hon. John Bright (1883), p. 523
- A little heavy, but no less divine.
- Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto III, stanza 91
- Breakfasted with Macaulay. He thinks that, though the last eight books of Paradise Lost contain incomparable beauties, Milton's fame would have stood higher if only the first four had been preserved. He would then have been placed above Homer.
- Lord Carlisle, journal entry (29 November 1849), quoted in George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, Volume II (1876), p. 199
- Milton's Paradise Lost is admirable; but am I therefore bound to maintain, that there are no flats amongst his elevations, when it is evident he creeps along sometimes for above a hundred lines together? Cannot I admire the height of his invention, and the strength of his expression, without defending his antiquated words, and the perpetual harshness of their sound? It is as much commendation as a man can bear, to own him excellent; all beyond it is idolatry.
- John Dryden, Preface to Sylvae, or the Second Part of Poetical Miscellanies (London, 1685)
- Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The next, in majesty; in both the last.
The force of Nature could no further go:
To make a third, she joined the former two.- John Dryden, Under Mr. Milton's Picture (1688)
- No man has so happily copied the manner of Homer, or so copiously translated his Grecisms, and the Latin elegancies of Virgil. It is true he runs into a flat of thought, sometimes for a hundred lines together, but it is when he has got into a track of Scripture.
- John Dryden, "A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire" (18 August 1692), in The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis (1693), Dedication, p. viii
- Neither will I justify Milton for his blank verse... For whatever causes he alleges for the abolishing of rhyme (which I have not now the leisure to examine) his own particular reason is plainly this, that rhyme was not his talent; he had neither the ease of doing it, nor the graces of it.
- John Dryden, "A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire" (18 August 1692), in The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis (1693), Dedication, p. ix
- This man cuts us all out, and the ancients too.
- John Dryden, as quoted in The Life of John Milton (1810) by Charles Symmons, p. 549
- "'Better to rule in Hell, than serve in Heaven.' Eh, little brother-killer?"
"Suh-certainly, Lord Lucifer. Whatever you say, Lord Lucifer."
"We didn't say it. Milton said it. And he was blind."- Neil Gaiman, portraying dialogue between Lucifer and Cain, with Lucifer repudiating the lines attributted to him by Milton, in The Sandman #22, Season of Mists episode 1
- But though in his noble and self-imposed task, the Defence of Liberty, Milton drew inspiration from the poets, orators and philosophers of Greece, nevertheless he stands proudly eminent as the great original genius who first proclaimed to our modern world the truth that freedom to express our thoughts in speech and writing is of all liberties most to be prized.
- Francis Hirst, Liberty and Tyranny (1935), pp. 215-216
- To plead the cause of Freedom was, said Milton, his sole aim during the twenty years that followed the meeting of the Long Parliament. In one group of writings he upheld political freedom; in another the right to revise the moral and social code; in a third he called on the nation to establish religious toleration and to liberate the conscience from ecclesiastical supervision. Above all, in the Areopagitica, passing to the fundamental question which dominates all forms of liberty and is its final test, he pleaded with superb power and eloquence for the widest freedom of thought, for complete liberty, unhampered by censors or licensers, to reject, to choose and, if need be, to innovate and reform, because without that supreme freedom he felt there could be no health or progress in the moral and intellectual life of an individual or of a nation. “Give me the liberty,” he wrote, “to know, to utter and to argue freely according to conscience above all liberties.”
- Francis Hirst, Liberty and Tyranny (1935), pp. 216-217
- An acrimonious and surly republican.
- Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Poets (1781), "The Life of Milton"
- The want of human interest is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read Milton for instruction, retire harassed and overburdened, and look elsewhere for recreation; we desert our master, and seek for companions.
- Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Poets (1781), "The Life of Milton"
- If he exerted himself to overthrow a forsworn king and a persecuting hierarchy, he exerted himself in conjunction with others. But the glory of the battle which he fought for that species of freedom which is the most valuable, and which was then the least understood, the freedom of the human mind, is all his own. Thousands and tens of thousands among his contemporaries raised their voices against Ship-money and the Star-chamber. But there were few indeed who discerned the more fearful evils of moral and intellectual slavery, and the benefits which would result from the liberty of the press and the unfettered exercise of private judgment. These were the objects which Milton justly conceived to be the most important. He was desirous that the people should think for themselves as well as tax themselves, and should be emancipated from the dominion of prejudice as well as from that of Charles.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay, 'Milton', The Edinburgh Review (August 1825), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. I (1843), p. 57
- I...sate on deck during the whole voyage. As I could not read, I used an excellent substitute for reading. I went through Paradise Lost in my head. I could still repeat half of it, and that the best half. I really never enjoyed it so much. In the dialogue at the end of the fourth book Satan and Gabriel became to me quite like two of Shakspeare's men. Old Sharp once told me that Henderson the actor used to say to him that there was no better acting scene in the English drama than this. I now felt the truth of the criticism.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay, journal entry (16 August 1849), quoted in George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, Volume II (1876), pp. 263–264
- Sir George Hungerford, an Ancient Member of Parliament, told me, many Years ago, that Sir John Denham came into the House one Morning with a Sheet, Wet from the Press, in his Hand. What have you there, Sir John? Part of the Noblest Poem that ever was Wrote in Any Language, or in Any Age. This was Paradise Lost.
- Jonathan Richardson, Explanatory Notes and Remarks on Milton's Paradise Lost (1734), p. cxix
- My Lord [the Earl of Dorset] took it [Paradise Lost] Home, Read it, and sent it to Dryden, who in a short time return'd it: This Man (says Dryden) Cuts us All Out, and the Ancients too.
- Jonathan Richardson, Explanatory Notes and Remarks on Milton's Paradise Lost (1734), pp. cxix-cxx
- [A] puppy, once my pretty little man, now blear-eyed, or rather a blinding; having never had any mental vision, he has now lost his bodily sight; a silly coxcomb, fancying himself a beauty; an unclean beast, with nothing more human about him than his guttering eyelids; the fittest doom for him would be to hang him on the highest gallows, and set his head on the Tower of London.
- Claudius Salmasius, Ad Ioannem Miltonum Responsio (1660); in Mark Pattison, Milton (1926)
- John Milton was one whose natural parts might deservedly give him a place amongst the principal of our English Poets, having written two Heroick Poems and a Tragedy, namely Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Sampson Agonista. But his Fame is gone out like a Candle in a Snuff, and his Memory will always stink, which might have ever lived in honorable Repute, had not he been a notorious Traytor, and most impiously and villanously bely'd that blessed Martyr, King Charles the First.
- William Winstanley, Lives of the Most Famous English Poets, 1687, in Edmund Gosse, Gossip in a Library (1913)
- Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.- William Wordsworth, "London, 1802", in Poems, in Two Volumes (1807)
- Milton, perhaps to relieve the uniformity of English structure, which tends to become too barely evident in blank verse, tries often to imitate the classical order; but the result is an effect often of artificiality, at best of solemnity. Homer's Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεὰ, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος Οὐλομένην, and Virgil's 'Arma virumque cano, Trojæ qui primus ab oris,' &c., put the right words in the right place, without any loss of spirit. Milton's opening—
Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe, &c.
is like an organ prelude: no English writer of a secular epic in blank verse could begin thus with success. It is impossible not to feel how tense must have been the struggle of that toil which Milton had to bestow on the stubborn material of his native language, before the gold of his words and verses won its full refinement. Diction so magnificent yet so severe cannot carry the reader along; so far from being the mere slave of the thought, like Homer's Greek, it is itself a marvel of study and meditation, which arrests and amazes him.
External links
- Milton Reading Room - online collection of all of Milton's poetry and selections of his prose
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