The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..
— Paradise Lost
John Milton was an English poet, pamphleteer and civil servant, widely ranked among the greatest poets in the language. His epic Paradise Lost (1667), written in blank verse in 12 books, retells the fall of man: Satan's temptation of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from Eden.
He lived through the English Civil War and served the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. His Areopagitica (1644), an attack on censorship before publication, remains one of the most influential defences of free speech and a free press. After the Restoration of 1660, and having lost his sight, he had little public platform left, and used those years to write many of his major works.
He lived through the English Civil War and served the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. His Areopagitica (1644), an attack on censorship before publication, remains one of the most influential defences of free speech and a free press. After the Restoration of 1660, and having lost his sight, he had little public platform left, and used those years to write many of his major works.
Most quoted works
- Paradise Lost 34
- Milton's Comus 4
- Areopagitica 3
- Comus 3
- The Complete Poetry 3
- L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas 2
Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n.
— Paradise Lost
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 surfet raigns.
— Comus
Be strong, live happy and love, but first of all / Him whom to love is to obey, and keep / His great command!
— Paradise Lost
And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
— The Complete Poetry
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.
— The Complete Poetry
Our state cannot be severed, we are one, One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.
— Paradise Lost
Where the bright seraphim in burning row / Their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow.
— The Complete Poetry
Henceforth an individual solace dear; Part of my Soul I seek thee, and thee claim My other half: with that thy gentle hand Seisd mine, I yielded, and from that time see How beauty is excelld by manly grace.
— Paradise Lost
I call therefore a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices both private and public, of peace and war.
— Of Education
And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas
Even the demons are encouraged when their chief is "not lost in loss itself.
— Paradise Lost
A grateful mind by owing owes not, but still pays, at once indebted and discharged; what burden then?
— Paradise Lost
I will not deny but that the best apology against false accusers is silence and sufferance, and honest deeds set against dishonest words.