The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643), Introduction. Compare: "The sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before", Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Book ii (1605)

“When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless.”

John Milton

On His Blindness (1652)

“Time will run back and fetch the Age of Gold.”

John Milton On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

Hymn, stanza 14, line 135
On the Morning of Christ's Nativity (1629)

“Blind mouths! That scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook.”

John Milton Lycidas

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 119

“O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray
Warbl'st at eve, when all the woods are still.”

John Milton

Sonnet, To the Nightingale (c. 1637)

“Truth…never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her forth.”

John Milton

The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643), Introduction

“No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free.”

John Milton

Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649)

“[Rhyme is] but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meter; … Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme, … as have also long since our best English tragedies, as… trivial and of no true musical delight; which [truly] consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory.”

John Milton

Introduction to Paradise Lost Added, 1668

“Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes
That on the green turf suck the honied showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freakt with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears.”

John Milton Lycidas

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 139

“It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in th' eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.”

John Milton Lycidas

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 100

“Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.”

John Milton On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

Hymn, stanza 18, line 172
On the Morning of Christ's Nativity (1629)

“Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son”

John Milton

To Mr. Lawrence (1656)

“Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.”

John Milton Lycidas

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 78

“Such as may make thee search the coffers round.”

John Milton

At a Vacation Exercise. Line 31, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)