“I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.”

—  John Milton , book Areopagitica

Source: Areopagitica

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adver…" by John Milton?
John Milton photo
John Milton 190
English epic poet 1608–1674

Related quotes

Denis Diderot photo

“People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it.”

Rameau's Nephew (1762)
Context: People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you've got to keep your feet warm.

William Blake photo
Benjamin Franklin photo

“To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girl friends.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

This has been widely attributed to Franklin since the 1940s, but is not found in any of his works. The language is not Franklin's, nor that of his time. It does paraphrase a portion of something he wrote in 1732 under the name Alice Addertongue:
If I have never heard Ill of some Person, I always impute it to defective Intelligence; for there are none without their Faults, no, not one. If she be a Woman, I take the first Opportunity to let all her Acquaintance know I have heard that one of the handsomest or best Men in Town has said something in Praise either of her Beauty, her Wit, her Virtue, or her good Management. If you know any thing of Humane Nature, you perceive that this naturally introduces a Conversation turning upon all her Failings, past, present, and to come.
Misattributed

Frederick Douglass photo
Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo

“If there is no immortality, there is no virtue. … Without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then, they can do what they like?”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

Нет бессмертия души, так нет и добродетели, значит, всё позволено. … Без бога-то и без будущей жизни? Ведь это, стало быть, теперь всё позволено, всё можно делать?
The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Dinah Craik photo
P. J. O'Rourke photo

“Two key rules of Third World travel: 1. Never run out of whiskey. 2. Never run out of whiskey.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

William Shakespeare photo

“Out of her favour, where I am in love.”

Source: Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare photo
Joanna Newsom photo

Related topics