Top 500 John Milton Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Eye me, blest Providence, and square my trial To my proportion’d strength.”

— John Milton

202. “For to interpose a little ease, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.”

— John Milton

203. “It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit, Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit, That woman’s love can win, or long inherit; But what it is, hard is to say, Harder to hit.”

— John Milton

204. “Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.”

— John Milton

205. “The best apology against false accusers is silence.”

— John Milton

206. “For men to tell how human life began Is hard; for who himself beginning knew?”

— John Milton

207. “Yet I argue not Against Heav’n’s hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer Right onward.”

— John Milton

208. “With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout, Confusion worse confounded.”

— John Milton

209. “Hope elevates, and joy Brightens his crest.”

— John Milton

210. “Fame is the last infirmity of the human mind.”

— John Milton

211. “From restless thoughts, that, like a deadly swarm Of hornets arm’d, no sooner found alone, But rush upon me thronging.”

— John Milton

212. “Who can in reason then or right assume monarchy over such as live by right his equals, if in power or splendor less, in freedom equal?”

— John Milton

213. “Still paying, still to owe. Eternal woe!”

— John Milton

214. “Dark with excessive bright.”

— John Milton

215. “Th’invention all admir’d, and each, how he to be th’inventor miss’d; so easy it seem’d once found, which yet unfound most would have thought impossible.”

— John Milton

216. “Can any mortal mixture of earth’s mould Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment?”

— John Milton

217. “Virtue that wavers is not virtue, but vice revolted from itself, and after a while returning. The actions of just and pious men do not darken in their middle course.”

— John Milton

218. “Back to thy punishment, False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings.”

— John Milton

219. “To know that which lies before us in daily life is the prime wisdom.”

— John Milton

220. “Beauty is nature’s brag, and must be shown in courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, where most may wonder at the workmanship.”

— John Milton

221. “Beauty is God’s handwriting-a wayside sacrament.”

— John Milton

222. “Rose out of Chaos:.”

— John Milton

223. “Death ready stands to interpose his dart.”

— John Milton

224. “The superior man acquaints himself with many sayings of antiquity and many deeds of the past, in order to strengthen his character thereby.”

— John Milton

225. “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.”

— John Milton

226. “Reason is also choice.”

— John Milton

227. “Know thy birth! For dost thou art, and shalt to dust return.”

— John Milton

228. “For solitude sometimes is best society and short retirement urges sweet return.”

— John Milton

229. “Enflamed 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.”

— John Milton

230. “And to the faithful: death, the gate of life.”

— John Milton

231. “Must I thus leave thee, Paradise?-thus leave Thee, native soil, these happy walks and shades?”

— John Milton

232. “All seemed well pleased, all seemed, but were not all.”

— John Milton

233. “What can ’scape the eye Of God, all-seeing, or deceive His heart. Omniscient!”

— John Milton

234. “Danger will wink on opportunity.”

— John Milton

235. “These are thy glorious works, Parent of good!”

— John Milton

236. “Boast not of what thou would’st have done, but do.”

— John Milton

237. “Nor jealousy Was understood, the injur’d lover’s hell.”

— John Milton

238. “The liberty of conscience, which above all other things ought to be to all men dearest and most precious.”

— John Milton

239. “And now the herald lark Left his ground-nest, high tow’ring to descry The morn’s approach, and greet her with his song.”

— John Milton

240. “So many laws argues so many sins.”

— John Milton

241. “Goodness thinks no ill Where no ill seems.”

— John Milton

242. “Hell has no benefits, only torture.”

— John Milton

243. “And the earth self-balanced on her centre hung.”

— John Milton

244. “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.”

— John Milton

245. “Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wreck’d.”

— John Milton

246. “For books are as meats and viands are; some of good, some of evil sub-stance.”

— John Milton

247. “Thou hadst: whom hast thou then or what to accuse, But Heav’ns free Love dealt equally to all? Be then his Love accurst, since love or hate, To me alike, it deals eternal woe. Nay.”

— John Milton

248. “Who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?”

— John Milton

249. “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.”

— John Milton

250. “Now conscience wakes despair That slumber’d,-wakes the bitter memory Of what he was, what is, and what must be Worse.”

— John Milton