John Milton Evil Quotations

More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged / To hoarse or mute though fall'n on evil days, / On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues; / In darkness, and with dangers compassed round, / And solitude.

So farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear, Farewell Remorse: all Good to me is lost; Evil be thou my Good

Evil news rides post, while good news bates

As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of good and evil?

Promiscuous reading is necessary to the constituting of human nature. 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.

It was from out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world.

And out of good still to find means of evil.

For evil news rides post, while good news baits.

Evil, be thou my good.

Sense of pleasure we may well Spare out of life perhaps, and not repine, But live content, which is the calmest life; But pain is perfect misery, the worst Of evils, and excessive, overturns All patience.

Evil into the mind of god or man may come and go, so unapproved, and leave no spot or blame behind.

For books are as meats and viands are; some of good, some of evil sub-stance.

That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness.

These evils I deserve, and more . . . . Justly, yet despair not of his final pardon, Whose ear is ever open, and his eye Gracious to re-admit the suppliant.

What wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian.

More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchang'd To hoarse or mute, though fall'n on evil days, On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues.

Evil on itself shall back recoil.

O visions ill foreseen! Better had I Liv'd ignorant of future, so had borne My part of evil only.