Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by John Milton (English Poet)

John Milton (1608–74) was an English poet of radical politics who lived during one of the most volatile times in the history of England. He is best remembered as the author of Lycidas (1637,) Paradise Lost, and Paradise Regained.

Born on Bread Street in London, to an affluent family, Milton studied at Cambridge. He became fluent in Latin, Greek, Italian, and Hebrew, and he committed the entire Bible to memory. In 1638, he left on a 15-month tour to visit Florence, Rome, and Naples and met such important figures as astronomer Galileo Galilei and the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius. His expedition to Europe was interrupted by news of political turmoil in England and the likelihood of a civil war.

Upon his return to England, Milton became a polemicist and wrote prose for the Republican cause. He used the then-new printing press to produce and distribute pamphlets. His political influential expanded, and Milton became chief assistant to Oliver Cromwell, lord protector of the English Commonwealth.

In his later years, Milton was beset by failing eyesight. By 1654, Milton was blind. Many of his poems were dictated to assistants, one of whom was the poet Andrew Marvell.

The English Commonwealth collapsed upon Cromwell’s death in 1658. After the reinstatement of the monarchy in 1660, Milton was imprisoned. Marvell argued that Milton was old and blind and thus posed no threat to Charles II. So, Milton narrowly escaped execution and got liberated.

All Milton’s three major works, Paradise Lost (1667; revised, 1674,) Paradise Regained (1671,) and Samson Agonistes (1671) were completed after he had gone blind. Scholars rate Paradise Lost the defining English epic, and interpret it as a political allegory—the fall of man in Eden echoes the lost paradise of Milton’s much-cherished Republic.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by John Milton

Sole partner, and sole part of all my joys, dearer thyself than all.
—John Milton
Topics: Wife

For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.
—John Milton
Topics: Reading, Books

When lust, by unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, but most by lewd and lavish acts of sin, lets in defilement to the inward parts, the soul grows clotted by contagion, embodies and imbrutes till she quite lose the divine property of her first being.
—John Milton

Loneliness is the first thing which God’s eye named, not good
—John Milton
Topics: Loneliness

Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe.
—John Milton
Topics: Victory

Faithful found among the faithless, his loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal, nor number, nor example with him wrought to swerve from truth, or change his constant mind.
—John Milton

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
Topics: Marriage, Wives

To know that which before us lies in daily life, is the prime wisdom; what is more is fume, or emptiness, or fond impertinence, and renders us, in things that most concern, unpracticed and unprepared.
—John Milton
Topics: Wisdom, Knowledge

Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape Crushed the sweet poison of misused wine.
—John Milton
Topics: Wine

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.
—John Milton
Topics: Virtue

For contemplation he, and valor formed; for softness she, and sweet attractive grace; he for God only, she for God in him.
—John Milton

For belief or practice in religion no man ought to be punished or molested by any outward force whatever.
—John Milton

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen, both when we sleep and when we wake.
—John Milton
Topics: Angels

Let us go forth and resolutely dare with sweat of brow to toil our little day.
—John Milton
Topics: Work

Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity.
—John Milton
Topics: Dying, Repentance, Death

Where liberty dwells, there is my country.
—John Milton
Topics: Liberty

Hail! holy light, offspring of heaven, first born!
—John Milton
Topics: Light

When night Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
—John Milton
Topics: Wine, Alcoholism, Alcohol

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

Luck is the residue of design.
—John Milton
Topics: Fortune, Luck

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
Topics: Death, Dying

Smiles from reason flow, to brute denied, and are of love the food.
—John Milton
Topics: Smiles

Wickedness is weakness.
—John Milton
Topics: Weakness

Not to know me argues yourselves unknown.
—John Milton
Topics: Fame

These two imparadised in one another’s arms, the happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill of bliss on bliss.
—John Milton
Topics: Lovers, Love

As well almost kill a man, as kill a good book; for the life of the one is but a few short years, while that of the other may be for ages.—Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself; kills as it were, the image of God.
—John Milton
Topics: Reading, Books, Censorship

He that has light within his own cleer brest
May sit ith center, and enjoy bright day,
But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts
Benighted walks under the mid-day Sun;
Himself is his own dungeon.
—John Milton
Topics: Secrets, Character, Light

The golden sun, in splendor likest heaven, dispenses light from far; days, months, and years, toward his all-cheering lamp turn their swift motions, or are turned by his magnetic beam that warms the universe.
—John Milton

God oft descends to visit men, unseen, and through their habitations walks, to mark their doings.
—John Milton

The power of Kings and Magistrates is nothing else, but what is only derivative, transferrd and committed to them in trust from the People, to the Common good of them all, in whom the power yet remaines fundamentally, and cannot be takn from them, without a violation of thir natural birthright.
—John Milton

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