Top 500 John Milton Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.”

— John Milton

302. “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

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

— John Milton

304. “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

305. “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

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

— John Milton

307. “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

308. “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

309. “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

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

— John Milton

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

— John Milton

312. “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

313. “Nothing lovelier can be found In woman, than to study household good, And good works in her husband to promote.”

— John Milton

314. “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

315. “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

316. “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

317. “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

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

— John Milton

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

— John Milton

320. “Thou art my father, thou my author, thou my being gav’st me; whom should I obey but thee, whom follow?”

— John Milton

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

— John Milton

322. “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

323. “Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given, That brought into this world a world of woe, Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery, Death’s harbinger.”

— John Milton

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

— John Milton

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

— John Milton

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

— John Milton

327. “Fear of change perplexes monarchs.”

— John Milton

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

— John Milton

329. “Have hung My dank and dropping weeds To the stern god of sea.”

— John Milton

330. “Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe.”

— John Milton

331. “Come knit hands, and beat the ground in a light fantastic round.”

— John Milton

332. “That space the Evil One abstracted stood From his own evil, and for the time remained Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed, Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge .”

— John Milton

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

— John Milton

334. “But O yet more miserable! Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave.”

— John Milton

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

— John Milton

336. “Celestial light, shine inward... that I may see and tell of things invisible to mortal sight.”

— John Milton

337. “As children gath’ring pebbles on the shore. Or if I would delight my private hours With music or with poem, where so soon As in our native language can I find That solace?”

— John Milton

338. “In argument with men a woman ever Goes by the worse, whatever be her cause.”

— John Milton

339. “And these gems of Heav’n, her starry train.”

— John Milton

340. “And every shepherd tells his tale Under the hawthorn in the dale.”

— John Milton

341. “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

342. “Where all life dies death lives.”

— John Milton

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

— 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. “So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity, That, when a soul is found sincerely so, A thousand liveried angels lacky her, Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt.”

— John Milton

346. “Morn, Wak’d by the circling hours, with rosy hand Unbarr’d the gates of light.”

— John Milton

347. “The winds with wonder whist, Smoothly the waters kisst.”

— John Milton

348. “To adore the conqueror, who now beholds Cherub and seraph rolling in the flood.”

— John Milton

349. “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.”

— John Milton

350. “Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm, A sylvan scene, and as the ranks ascend Shade above shade, a woody theatre Of stateliest view.”

— John Milton