John Milton Flashcards
“But what more oft…
in nations grown corrupt, / And by their vices brought to servitude, / Than to love bondage more than liberty, / Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty” (Samson Agonistes)
“For God sure esteems…
the growth and completing of one virtuous person more than the restraint of ten vicious.” (Aeropagitica)
“Who can be at rest…
who can enjoy any thing in this world with contentment, who hath notlibertieto serve God and to save his own soul, according to the best light which God hath planted in him to that purpose” (The Ready and Easy Way)
“God uses not…
to captivate under a perpetual childhood of prescription, but trusts him with the gift of reason to be his own chooser” (Aeropagitica)
“without intricacies, without the introducement…
of new or obsolete forms, or terms, or exotic models;idea’sthat would effect nothing, but with a number of new injunctions to manacle the native liberty ofmankinde; turning allvertueinto prescription, servitude, andnecessitie, to the great impairing and frustrating of Christianlibertie” (The Ready and Easy Way)
“drawn forth his reasons as it were…
a battle ranged: scattered and defeated all objections in his way; calls out his adversary into the plain, offers him the advantage of wind and sun, if he please, only that he may try the matter by dint of argument: for his opponents then to skulk, to lay ambushments, to keep a narrow bridge of licensing where the challenger should pass, though it be valour enough in soldiership, is but weakness and cowardice in the wars of Truth.” (Aeropagitica)
“their human…
countenance/ Th’ express resemblance of the gods, is changed/ Into some brutish form” (Comus)
“And what madness is it…
for them who might manage noblythirown affairs themselves, sluggishly and weakly to devolve all on a single person… we need depend on none but God and our own counsels” (The Ready and Easy Way)
“to make the fittest…
to choose, and the chosen fittest to govern, will be to mend our corrupt and faulty education” (The Ready and Easy Way)
“Nothing of all these…
evils hathbefall’nme / But justly; I my self have brought them on” (Samson Agonistes)
“Give me the liberty…
to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties” (Aeropagitica)
“Let her and Falsehood grapple…
who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?” (Aeropagitica)
“that which purifies us…
is trial, and trial is by what is contrary” (Aeropagitica)
“The whole freedom…
of man consists either in spiritual or civillibertie.” (The Ready and Easy Way)
“If men within themselves would be…
govern’dby reason, and not generally give upthirunderstanding to adoubletyrannie, ofCustomfrom without, and blind affections within, they woulddiscernebetter, what it is tofavourand uphold the Tyrant of a Nation.” (The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates)
