Top 500 John Milton Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “Wisdom’s self oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, where with her best nurse Contemplation, she plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings that in the various bustle of resort were all to-ruffled, and sometimes impaired.”

— John Milton

302. “But now my task is smoothly done, I can fly, or I can run Quickly to the green earth’s end, Where the bow’d welkin slow doth bend, And from thence can soar as soon To the corners of the Moon.”

— John Milton

303. “The helmed Cherubim, And sworded Seraphim, Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display’d.”

— John Milton

304. “My sentence is for open war.”

— John Milton

305. “But his doom 54: Reserv’d him to more wrath; for now the thought 55: Both of lost happiness and lasting pain 56: Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes 57: That witness’d huge affliction and dismay 58: Mixt with obdurate pride and stedfast hate:.”

— John Milton

306. “His spear, to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills to be the mast Of some great ammiral were but a wand, He walk’d with to support uneasy steps Over the burning marle.”

— John Milton

307. “So he with difficulty and labour hard Mov’d on, with difficulty and labour he.”

— John Milton

308. “Yet some there be that by due steps aspire To lay their just hands on that golden key That opes the palace of Eternity.”

— John Milton

309. “It was the winter wild, While the Heaven-born child, All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies.”

— John Milton

310. “Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.”

— John Milton

311. “How gladly would I meet mortality, my sentence, and be earth in sensible! How glad would lay me down, as in my mother’s lap! There I should rest, and sleep secure.”

— John Milton

312. “Fairy elves, Whose midnight revels by a forest side Or fountain some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon Sits arbitress.”

— John Milton

313. “Hail, wedded love, mysterious law; true source of human happiness.”

— John Milton

314. “I was all ear, And took in strains that might create a soul Under the ribs of death.”

— John Milton

315. “For so I created them free and free they must remain.”

— John Milton

316. “Therefore God’s universal law Gave to the man despotic power Over his female in due awe, Not from that right to part an hour, Smile she or lour.”

— John Milton

317. “Those graceful acts, those thousand decencies, that daily flow from all her words and actions, mixed with love and sweet compliance, which declare unfeigned union of mind, or in us both one soul.”

— John Milton

318. “How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence through the empty-vaulted night, At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness till it smiled!”

— John Milton

319. “Courage never to submit of yield.”

— John Milton

320. “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.”

— John Milton

321. “Where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal anarchy amidst the noise Of endless wars, and by confusion stand; For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce, Strive here for mast’ry.”

— John Milton

322. “Govern well thy appetite, lest Sin surprise thee, and her black attendant Death.”

— John Milton

323. “A thousand fantasies Begin to throng into my memory, Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire, And airy tongues that syllable men’s names On sands and shores and desert wildernesses.”

— John Milton

324. “Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt, Dispraise, or blame,-nothing but well and fair, And what may quiet us in a death so noble.”

— John Milton

325. “Nor aught availed him now to have built in heaven high towers; nor did he scrape by all his engines, but was headlong sent with his industrious crew to build in hell.”

— John Milton

326. “Oh, shame to men! devil with devil damn’d Firm concord holds, men only disagree Of creatures rational.”

— John Milton

327. “But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale, And love the high embowed roof, With antique pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight; Casting a dim religious light.”

— John Milton

328. “And what is faith, love, virtue unassayed Alone, without exterior help sustained?”

— John Milton

329. “Ah gentle pair, ye little think how nigh Your change approaches, when all these delights Will vanish and deliver ye to woe, More woe, the more your taste is now of joy.”

— John Milton

330. “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.”

— John Milton

331. “He who tempts, though in vain, at last asperses The tempted with dishonor foul, supposed Not incorruptible of faith, not proof Against temptation.”

— John Milton

332. “Spirits when they please Can either sex assume, or both.”

— John Milton

333. “Tower’d cities please us then, And the busy hum of men.”

— John Milton

334. “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.”

— John Milton

335. “How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo’s lute, And a perpetual feast of nectar’d sweets Where no crude surfeit reigns.”

— John Milton

336. “So spake the seraph Abdiel, faithful found; Among the faithless, faithful only he.”

— John Milton

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

— John Milton

338. “Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined; Till at his second bidding darkness fled, Light shone, and order from disorder sprung.”

— John Milton

339. “Let no man seek Henceforth to be foretold that shall befall Him or his children.”

— John Milton

340. “But all was false and hollow; though his tongue Dropp’d manna, and could make the worse appear The better reason, 4 to perplex and dash Maturest counsels.”

— John Milton

341. “Day and night, Seed-time and harvest, heat and hoary frost Shall hold their course, till fire purge all things new.”

— John Milton

342. “So shall the world go on, To good malignant, to bad men benign, Under her own weight groaning.”

— John Milton

343. “Moping melancholy And moon-struck madness.”

— John Milton

344. “And fast by, hanging in a golden chain, This pendent world, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude, close by the moon.”

— John Milton

345. “And out of good still to find means of evil.”

— John Milton

346. “Fear of change perplexes monarchs.”

— John Milton

347. “If weakness may excuse, What murderer, what traitor, parricide, Incestuous, sacrilegious, but may plead it? All wickedness is weakness; that plea, therefore, With God or man will gain thee no remission.”

— John Milton

348. “O visions ill foreseen! Better had I Liv’d ignorant of future, so had borne My part of evil only.”

— John Milton

349. “And live like Nature’s bastards, not her sons.”

— John Milton

350. “O’er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death.”

— John Milton