Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest birds.
— John Milton
Charming Paradise Lost Book 2 quotations
Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep.
Abash'd the Devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is.
Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.
Eloquence the soul, song charms the senses.
On a sudden open fly With impetuous recoil and jarring sound Th' infernal doors, and on their hinges grate Harsh thunder.
So he with difficulty and labour hard Mov'd on, with difficulty and labour he.
With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout, Confusion worse confounded.
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.
Back to thy punishment, False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings.
For contemplation he and valour formed;
/ For softness she and sweet attractive grace, / He for God only, she for God in him: / His fair large front and eye sublime declared / Absolute rule.
Now came still evening on; and twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad: Silence accompanied; for beast and bird, They to they grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale.
Our torments also may in length of time Become our Elements.
Meanwhile the Adversary of God and man, Satan with thoughts inflamed of highest design, Puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of hell Explores his solitary flight.
A grateful mind/ By owing owes not, but still pays, at once/ Indebted and discharg'd.
Knowledge forbidden? Suspicious, reasonless.
Why should their Lord Envy them that? Can it be a sin to know? Can it be death?
This horror will grow mild, this darkness light.
And that must end us, that must be our cure: To be no more.
Sad cure! For who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish, rather, swallowed up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night Devoid of sense and motion?
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death.
'Paradise Lost' is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell.
For no falsehood can endure Touch of celestial temper.
Arm the obdured breast with stubborn patience as with triple steel.
And feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce.
Among unequals what society Can sort, what harmony, or true delight?
And fast by, hanging in a golden chain, This pendent world, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude, close by the moon.
Into this wild abyss, The womb of Nature and perhaps her grave.
The never-ending flight Of future days.
The strongest and the fiercest spirit That fought in heaven, now fiercer by despair.
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy.
Me miserable! Which way shall I fly Infinite wrath and infinite despair? Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep, Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide, To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.
Which, if not victory, is yet revenge.
Hail, wedded love, mysterious law; true source of human happiness.
So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost;Evil,be thou my good.
