John Milton
John Milton
John Miltonwas an English poet, polemicist, and man of letters, and a 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...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth9 December 1608
necessity
With necessity, / The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds.
might shape
The other shape, / If shape it might be called that shape had none.
add taking
We are at the max, ... We can't add anything out here without taking away something else.
consider dark days death half light spent talent
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.
heroic life poems writers-and-writing
Let those who would write heroic poems make their life an heroic poem.
arabian bird knows lay nor second self woods
Like that self-begotten bird / In the Arabian woods embost, / That no second knows nor third, / And lay ere while a holocaust.
golden leaders-and-leadership
A crown, golden in show is but a wreath of thorns.
quarrels providence ends
I must not quarrel with the will Of highest dispensation, which herein, Haply had ends above my reach to know.
temples christ force
We read not that Christ ever exercised force but once; and that was to drive profane ones out of his Temple, not to force them in.
faithful fidelity found
Faithful found among the faithless.
thrones oratory fierce
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.
character men past
The superior man acquaints himself with many sayings of antiquity and many deeds of the past, in order to strengthen his character thereby.
soil fame plant
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.
unwise servitude
This is servitude, To serve the unwise.