Milton Quotes

• We cannot arrive at Shakespeare's whole dramatic way of looking at the world from his tragedies alone, as we can arrive at Milton's way of regarding things, or at Wordsworth's or at Shelley's, by examining almost any one of their important works.

  Andrew Coyle Bradley

  Tragedy, Important, World

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• It would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of masculine beauty is Satan, as portrayed by Milton.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Perfect, Would Be, Satanic

  "Intimate Journals: Fusées". Book by Charles Baudelaire, 1867.

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• The only ones who like Milton Berle are his mother - and the public.

  Walter Winchell

  Mother

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• Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years.

  Carl Sandburg

  Years, Cities, Differences

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• And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.

  A. E. Housman

  Drinking, Food, Book

  A Shropshire Lad no. 62, l. 21 (1896)

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• The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.

  William Blake

  Party, Angel, Knowing

  The Marriage of Heaven and Hell "The Voice of the Devil" (note) (1790 - 1793)

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• No poem, not even Shakespeare or Milton or Chaucer, is ever strong enough to totally exclude every crucial precursor text or poem.

  Harold Bloom

  Strong, Enough, Chaucer

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• The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil.

  Voltaire

  Sacrifice, Grace, Devil

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• May the soul of the late President Milton Obote... a long-time member of this parliament, rest in peace.

  Yoweri Museveni

  Rest In Peace, Long, Soul

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• There was a time... when people didn't go out of their house on Tuesday night at eight o'clock because Milton Berle was on.

  Ed McMahon

  Night, Eight, People

  " Milton Berle diagnosed with cancerous tumor", www.cnn.com. April 25, 2001.

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• My landlady, who is only a tailor's widow, reads her Milton; and tells me, that her late husband first fell in love with her on this very account: because she read Milton with such proper emphasis.

  Karl Philipp Moritz

  Husband, Widows, Literature

  Karl Philipp Moritz (2010). “Travels in England in 1782”, p.21, BoD – Books on Demand

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• I would say that Mickey Mouse has a greater influence on the American public than Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Rabelais, Shostakovitch, Lenin, and/or Van Gogh. Which says 'What?' about the American Public. Disneyland remains the central attraction of Southern California, but the graveyard remains our reality.

  Charles Bukowski

  Reality, California, Southern

  Charles Bukowski (2003). “Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews and Encounters, 1963-1993”

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• Formerly Milton's Paradise Lost had been my chief favourite, and in my excursions during the voyage of the Beagle, when I could take only a single small volume, I always chose Milton.

  Charles Darwin

  Science, Paradise, Biographies

  Charles Darwin (2010). “The Works of Charles Darwin, Volume 29: “Erasmus Darwin” by Ernest Krause, with a Preliminary Notice by Charles Darwin; “The Autobiography of Charles Darwin” Edited by Nora Barlow; and Consolidated Index”, p.118, NYU Press

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• I don't believe there's a man in Milton who knows how to sit still; and it is a great art.

  Elizabeth Gaskell

  Art, Believe, Men

  Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1951). “North and south”

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• Milton took vaudeville, which, if you look up 'vaudeville' in the dictionary, right alongside of it, it says 'Milton Berle' - and he made it just a tremendous party.

  Alan King

  Party, Looks, Vaudeville

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• Asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form. And those taught that they deserve nothing rightly enjoy it when they succeed in terms the culture understands.

  Zadie Smith

  Army, Epic, Rapper

  "The House That Hova Built". www.nytimes.com. September 6, 2012.

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• I think in my case, I had no choice but to have a good sense of humor. I grew up with my dad, Danny Thomas, and George Burns and Bob Hope and Milton Berle and Sid Caesar and all those guys were at our house all the time and telling jokes and making each other laugh.

  Marlo Thomas

  Dad, Thinking, Laughing

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• We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
  That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold
  Which Milton held.

  William Wordsworth

  Death, Faith, Freedom

  'It is not to be thought of' (1807)

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• O mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies, O skilled to sing of Time or Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton, a name to resound for ages.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Time, Names, Voice

  'Northern Farmer. New Style' (1869) st. 5

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• His books were part of him. Each year of his life, it seemed, his books became more and more a part of him. This room, thirty by twenty feet, and the walls of shelves filled with books, had for him the murmuring of many voices. In the books of Herodotus, Tacitus, Rabelais, Thomas Browne, John Milton, and scores of others, he had found men of face and voice more real to him than many a man he had met for a smoke and a talk.

  Carl Sandburg

  Wall, Real, Book

  Carl Sandburg (1948). “Remembrance Rock”

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• Neither claimed any responsibility for Milton Keynes, but both reported it as a success.

  Terry Pratchett

  Responsibility, Keynes

  Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett (2011). “Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch”, p.44, Harper Collins

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• Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his economic policies have been tried.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Economic, Policy, Has Beens

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• I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business: Beethoven's deafness, Goya's deafness, Milton's blindness, that kind of thing.

  John Berryman

  Artist, Ideas, Achievement

  "EM Forster's work tailed off once he finally had sex. Better that than a life of despair" by Sam Leith, www.theguardian.com. June 13, 2010.

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• I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I’m not feeling so well myself.

  Mark Twain

  Sorry, Greatness, Names

  Mark Twain's speech to the Savage Club (June 9, 1899), as quoted in "Mark Twain's Speeches" edited by William Dean Howells (pp. 277-278), 1910.

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• The myth of the inevitability of economic globalization is based largely on the work of Milton Friedman, and easily the most underreported story of our time is that the current economy proves Friedman flatly wrong.

  Molly Ivins

  Economic Globalization, Stories, Libertarian

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