Quotes from John Milton

O nightingale, that on yon bloomy sprayWarbl'st at eve, when all the woods are still.

My latest found,Heaven's last, best gift, my ever new delight!

To live a life half dead, a living death.

And feel that I am happier than I know.

Ornate rhetoric taught 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.

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of artsAnd eloquence.

He knewHimself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.

My sentence is for open war.

Men of most renowned virtue have sometimes by transgressing most truly kept the law.

Liquid lapse of murmuring streams.

The brazen throat of war.

And the gilded car of day,His glowing axle doth allayIn the steep Atlantic stream.

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once moreYe myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,And with forc'd fingers rudeShatter your leaves before the mellowing year.

A wilderness of sweets.

I walk unseenOn the dry smooth-shaven green,To behold the wandering moon,Riding near her highest noon,Like one that had been led astrayThrough the heav'n's wide pathless way,And oft, as if her head she bow'd,Stooping through a fleecy cloud.

Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve.

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year.

Boast not of what thou would'st have done, but doWhat then thou would'st.

Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruitOf that forbidden tree whose mortal tasteBrought death into the world, and all our woe,With loss of Eden.

Ladies, whose bright eyesRain influence, and judge the prize.

Love-quarrels oft in pleasing concord end;Not wedlock-treachery.

Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves.

Virtue could see to do what Virtue wouldBy her own radiant light, though sun and moonWere in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's selfOft seeks to sweet retired solitude,Where, with her best nurse Contemplation,She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings.

Till morning fairCame forth with pilgrim steps, in amice gray.