John Milton Quotes
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John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, man of letters, and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost , written in blank verse.

Milton's poetry and prose reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day. Writing in English, Latin, Greek, and Italian, he achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his celebrated Areopagitica , written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship, is among history's most influential and impassioned defences of free speech and freedom of the press.

William Hayley's 1796 biography called him the "greatest English author", and he remains generally regarded "as one of the preeminent writers in the English language", though critical reception has oscillated in the centuries since his death . Samuel Johnson praised Paradise Lost as "a poem which...with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human mind", though he described Milton's politics as those of an "acrimonious and surly republican".

✵ 9. December 1608 – 8. November 1674

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John Milton: 190 quotes18 likes

John Milton Quotes

“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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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”

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.”

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

“And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced choir below,
In service high, and anthems clear
As may, with sweetness, through mine ear
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all heaven before mine eyes.”

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 159

“Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy
In sceptred pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line,
Or the tale of Troy divine.”

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 97

“Herbs, and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses.”

Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 85

“In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out, and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.”

Tractate of Education (1644)

“Where more is meant than meets the ear.”

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 120

“Last came, and last did go,
The Pilot of the Galilean lake;
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain,
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).”

John Milton Lycidas

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 108

“And join with thee, calm Peace and Quiet,
Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet.”

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 45

“Then to the spicy nut-brown ale.”

Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 100

“Towered cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men.”

Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 117

“Or call up him that left half told
The story of Cambuscan bold.”

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 109

“This is the month, and this the happy morn,
Wherein the Son of Heav'n's eternal King,
Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
That He our deadly forfeit should release,
And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.”

John Milton On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

Stanza 1, line 1
On the Morning of Christ's Nativity (1629)

“Inflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.”

Tractate of Education (1644)

“Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones
Forget not.”

On the Late Massacre in Piedmont (1655)

“Ornate rhetoric thought out of the rule of Plato… To which poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less subtle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate.”

Tractate of Education (1644)

“When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling leaves
With minute drops from off the eaves.”

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 128

“Peor and Baälim
Forsake their temples dim.”

John Milton On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

Hymn. Line 197
On the Morning of Christ's Nativity (1629)

“Under the shady roof
Of branching elm star-proof.”

John Milton Arcades

Arcades (1630-1634), line 88

“Hence vain deluding Joys,
The brood of Folly without father bred!”

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 1

“Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful jollity,
Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathèd smiles.”

Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 25

“Then lies him down the lubber fiend,
And stretched out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength.”

Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 110

“Yet I argue not
Against Heav'n's hand or will, nor bate one jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up, and steer
Right onward.”

To Cyriack Skinner, upon His Blindness (c. 1655)

“Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,
Far from all resort of mirth,
Save the cricket on the hearth.”

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 79

“Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.”

John Milton Lycidas

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 1

“Sport, that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter, holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it, as you go.
On the light fantastic toe.”

Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 31

“The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said;
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.”

John Milton Lycidas

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 123

“Ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize.”

Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 121

“Under the opening eyelids of the morn,
We drove afield; and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night.”

John Milton Lycidas

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 26

“He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem.”

Apology for Smectymnuus (1642)

“Hence, loathèd Melancholy,
Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,
In Stygian cave forlorn,
'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy.”

Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 1

“New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ Large.”

On the new forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament (1645)

“A poet soaring in the high reason of his fancies, with his garland and singing robes about him.”

The Reason of Church Government (1641), Book II, Introduction

“Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half-regained Eurydice.
These delights, if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee, I mean to live.”

Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 148

“Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorrèd shears,
And slits the thin-spun life.”

John Milton Lycidas

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 64; comparable to: "Erant quibus appetentior famæ videretur, quando etiam sapientibus cupido gloriae novissima exuitur" (Translated: "Some might consider him as too fond of fame, for the desire of glory clings even to the best of men longer than any other passion"), Tacitus, Historiae, iv. 6; said of Helvidius Priscus.

“And add to these retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.”

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 49

“In mirth that after no repenting draws.”

To Cyriack Skinner, upon His Blindness (c. 1655)

“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.”

Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 94

“Cyriack, whose Grandsire on the Royal Bench
Of British Themis, with no mean applause
Pronounced and in his volumes taught our Laws,
Which others at their Bar so often wrench”

To Cyriack Skinner (1655)

“Peace hath her victories
No less renowned than war.”

To the Lord General Cromwell (1652)
Quoted by President Benjamin Harrison in his dedication of the Chicago Auditorium, and thereafter inscribed on the building, as reported in Dr. William Carter, "Progress in World's Peace Movement", California Outlook (1913), Vol. 14, p. 11

“The gay motes that people the sunbeams.”

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 8

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