Quotes
Quotes - Milton
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.
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.
Ornate rhetorick taught out of the rule of Plato.... To which poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less suttle 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.
As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself.
A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
Seasoned life of man preserved and stored up in books.
I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.
Who shall silence all the airs and madrigals that whisper softness in chambers?
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.
Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do ingloriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple: who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?
Men of most renowned virtue have sometimes by transgressing most truly kept the law.
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.
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 mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven.
They also serve who only stand and wait.
. . . and now expecting Each hour their great adventurer, from the search Of foreign words.
Adam, well may we labour, still to dress This garden, still to tend plant, herb, and flower.
If by fire Of sooty coal th' empiric alchymist Can turn, or holds it possible to turn, Metals of drossiest ore to perfect gold.
Here may we reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell. Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
Such joy ambition finds.
But what will not ambition and revenge Descend to? who aspires must down as low As high he soar'd, obnoxious first and last To basest things.
If at great things thou would'st arrive, Get riches first, get wealth, and treasure heap, Not difficult, if thou hearken to me; Riches are mine, fortune is in my hand, They whom I favor thrive in wealth amain, While virtue, valor, wisdom, sit in want.
