John Milton
No worthy enterprise can be done by us without continual plodding and wearisomeness to our faint and sensitive abilities.Collection: Perseverance
A good principle not rightly understood may prove as hurtful as a bad.Collection: Hurtful
Nor aught availed him now to have built in heaven high towers; nor did he scrape by all his engines, but was headlong sent with his industrious crew to build in hell.Collection: Heaven
The rising world of waters dark and deep.Collection: Dark
Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.Collection: Angel
Where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal anarchy amidst the noise Of endless wars, and by confusion stand; For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce, Strive here for mast'ry.Collection: Nature
Eloquence the soul, song charms the senses.Collection: Song
How oft, in nations gone corrupt, And by their own devices brought down to servitude, That man chooses bondage before liberty. Bondage with ease before strenuous liberty.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Death
Take heed lest passion sway Thy judgement to do aught, which else free will Would not admit.Collection: Passion
Come, pensive nun, devout and pure, sober steadfast, and demure, all in a robe of darkest grain, flowing with majestic train.Collection: Majestic
Thence to the famous orators repair, Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence Wielded at will that fierce democratie, Shook the arsenal, and fulmin'd over Greece, To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne.Collection: Thrones
Only this I know, That one celestial father gives to all.Collection: God
Rich and various gems inlay The unadorned bosom of the deep.Collection: Ocean
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raiseCollection: Spurs
Yet I shall temper so Justice with mercy, as may illustrate most Them fully satisfy'd, and thee appease.Collection: Justice
Nor jealousy Was understood, the injur'd lover's hell.Collection: Jealous
No war or battle sound Was heard the world around.Collection: War
The timely dew of sleep Now falling with soft slumb'rous weight inclines Our eyelids.Collection: Fall
Fame, if not double fac'd, is double mouth'd, And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds; On both his wings, one black, the other white, Bears greatest names in his wild aery flight.Collection: Names
Wild above rule or art, enormous bliss.Collection: Art
And the jocund rebecks sound To many a youth, and many a maid, Dancing in the checkered shade. And young and old come forth to play On a sunshine holiday.Collection: Holiday
Forget thyself to marble.Collection: Forget
Now I see Peace to corrupt no less than war to waste.Collection: War
All hell broke loose.Collection: Hell
First Moloch, horrid king, besmirched in blood, Of Human sacrifice, and parent's tears, Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud, Their childrens' cries unheard, that passed through fire, To his grim idol.Collection: Kings
Is it just or reasonable, that most voices against the main end of government should enslave the less number that would be free? more just it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel a greater to retain, which can be no wrong to them, their liberty, than that a greater number, for the pleasure of their baseness, compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow-slaves. They who seek nothing but their own just liberty, have always right to win it and to keep it, whenever they have power, be the voices never so numerous that oppose it.Collection: Winning
Then wilt thou not be loath To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess A Paradise within thee, happier far.Collection: Happiness
The liberty of conscience, which above all other things ought to be to all men dearest and most precious.Collection: Men
For such kind of borrowing as this, if it be not bettered by the borrowers, among good authors is accounted Plagiarè.Collection: Kind
Heaven is for thee too high To know what passes there; be lowly wise. Think only what concerns thee and thy being; Dream not of other worlds, what creatures there Live, in what state, condition, or degree, Contented that thus far hath been revealed.Collection: Wise
His rod revers'd, And backward mutters of dissevering power.Collection: Power
Indu'd With sanctity of reason.Collection: Reason
Leaves have their time to fall, And flowers to wither at the north - wind's breath, And stars to set; but all, Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!Collection: Death
This having learnt, thou hast attained the sum Of wisdom; hope no higher, though all the stars Thou knew'st by name, and all th'ethereal powers, All secrets of the deep, all nature's works, Or works of God in heav'n, air, earth, or sea, And all the riches of this world enjoy'dst, And all the rule, one empire; onlyadd Deeds to thy knowledge answerable, add faith, Add virtue, patience, temperance, add love, By name to come called charity, the soul Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loath To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess A paradise within thee, happier far.Collection: Patience
And as an ev'ning dragon came, Assailant on the perched roosts And nests in order rang'd Of tame villatic fowl.Collection: Dragons
What if Earth be but the shadow of Heaven and things therein - each other like, more than on Earth is thought?Collection: Heaven
And, re-assembling our afflicted powers, consult how we may henceforth most offend.Collection: Revenge
How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence through the empty-vaulted night, At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness till it smiled!Collection: Fall
Wickedness is weakness.Collection: Weakness
Thou art my father, thou my author, thou my being gav'st me; whom should I obey but thee, whom follow?Collection: Art
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope And hazard in the glorious enterprise.Collection: Hazards
When a king sets himself to bandy against the highest court and residence of all regal powers, he then, in the single person of a man, fights against his own majesty and kingship.Collection: Kings
It was the winter wild, While the Heaven-born child, All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies.Collection: Children