John Milton
John Milton (1608 - 1674) was an English poet, born in London, son of a scrivener. He graduated at Cambridge, and settled to study and write poetry in his father's house at Horton in 1632. In 1638 he visited Italy, being already known at home as the author of the "Hymn on the Nativity," "Allegro," "Penseroso," "Comus," a mask, and "Lycidas," an elegy on his friend King, who was drowned in the Irish Sea in 1637, besides much excellent Latin verse. However, the outbreak of the Civil War recalled him, and silenced his muse for many years. Settling in London he took pupils, married Mary Powell in 1643, and became active as a writer of pamphlets on public questions. His first topic was Church Government, then his wife's desertion of him for two years called forth his tracts on Divorce, a threatened prosecution for which elicited in turn the "Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing".His father died in 1647, his wife in 1652. Under the Common wealth he was "Secretary of Foreign Tongues," and successfully defended the execution of Charles I in his Latin "Defence of the English People," and other bitter controversial works. He married in 1656 his second wife, who died two years later. The Restoration gave him back to leisure and poetry. His greatest work, "Paradise Lost," was composed rapidly, dictated to his daughters, and completed in 1663, but not published till 1667. The year 1671 saw "Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes". He had been blind since 1652. He married Elizabeth Minshull in 1663, who comforted him in his closing years.
A man of fervent, impulsive temperament, and a lover of music, he was sincere in controversy, magnanimous in character, and of deep religious faith. The richness, melody, and simplicity of his poetry, the sublimity of his great theme, and the adequacy of its treatment, place him among the greatest poets of the world. In later years he leaned to Arianism, and broke away from the restraints of outward religious practice. His last prose work, a Latin treatise on "Christian Doctrines," was lost at the time of his death, and only recovered 150 years later.
Wisdom & Quotes
- For contemplation he and valour formed;
He for God only, she for God in him.
- Paradise Lost
- Care
- Paradise Lost
- The evening star,
- Paradise Lost
- So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,
Evil be thou my good.
- Paradise Lost
- Who overcome
- Paradise Lost
- Long is the way
- Paradise Lost
- Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
- Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
Still threatening to devour me opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.
- Paradise Lost
- For neither man nor angel can discern
Invisible, except to God alone.
- Paradise Lost
- I shall temper… justice with mercy.
- The mind is its own place, and in itself
- Paradise Lost
- What in me is dark
That to the height of his great argument
I may assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
- Paradise Lost
- To know
Is the prime wisdom.
- Paradise Lost
- O fairest of creation! Last and best
- Paradise Lost
- As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself.
- 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.
- It was the winter wild
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies.
- On the Morning of Christ's Nativity
- License they mean when they cry liberty.
- Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger,
- On May Morning
- Sabrina fair,
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of lilies knitting
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair;
Listen for dear honour's sake,
Goddess of the silver lake,
Listen and save.
- Comus
- Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt,
- Comus
- For what can war, but endless war still breed?
Thomas Fuller