John Milton

For what is more agreeable to the nature of man, than to be free?

He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things.

For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.

His words, like so many nimble and airy servitors, trip about him at command.

Litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees.

The attempt to keep out evil doctrine by licensing is like the exploit of that gallant man who thought to keep out the crows by shutting the park gate.

Enjoy your dear wit and gay rhetoric, That hath so well been taught her dazzling fence.

His rod revers'd, And backward mutters of dissevering power.

Whence and what art thou, execrable shape?

O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death.

Gorgons and Hydras and Chimæras dire.

Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.

For liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands.

Promiscuous reading is necessary to the constituting of human nature.

You can make hell out of heaven and heaven out of hell. It's all in the mind.

What hath night to do with sleep?

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, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.

For what can war but acts of war produce? And what can acts of war but wars breed?