Top 15 John Milton Quotes

English poet and civil servant (1608–1674)

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John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is most famous for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), written in blank verse.

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The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..

What hath night to do with sleep?

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.

Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.

Solitude sometimes is best society.

Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.

Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n.

Freely we serve
Because we freely love, as in our will
To love or not; in this we stand or fall.

Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely: and pined his loss

All is not lost, the unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and the courage never to submit or yield.

I will not deny but that the best apology against false accusers is silence and sufferance, and honest deeds set against dishonest words.

Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep...

Me miserable! Which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.

Innocence, Once Lost, Can Never Be Regained. Darkness, Once Gazed Upon, Can Never Be Lost.

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?