|
John Milton
(9 Dec 1608 - 8 Nov 1674)
English poet noted in particular for Paradise Lost, a blank verse epic on the fall of man (completed by 1665, published 1667). Having by this time lost his sight, the poem was accomplished by dictation.
|
Science Quotes by John Milton (7)
Aristotle ... imputed this symphony of the heavens ... this music of the spheres to Pythagorus. ... But Pythagoras alone of mortals is said to have heard this harmony ... If our hearts were as pure, as chaste, as snowy as Pythagoras' was, our ears would resound and be filled with that supremely lovely music of the wheeling stars.
— John Milton
'On the Music of the Spheres'. Second Prolusion. In John Milton and Merritt Yerkes Hughes (ed.), Complete Poems and Major Prose (1957, 2003), 603-604.
By night the Glass
Of Galileo ... observes
Imagin'd Land and Regions in the Moon.
Of Galileo ... observes
Imagin'd Land and Regions in the Moon.
— John Milton
Paradise Lost, Book 5, lines 261-263. In Books V and VI, edited by A. W. Verity,(1910), 11.
He scarce had ceased when the superior fiend
Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield
Ethereal temper, massy, large and round,
Behind him cast; the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening from the top of Fésolè,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe.
Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield
Ethereal temper, massy, large and round,
Behind him cast; the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening from the top of Fésolè,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe.
— John Milton
Paradise Lost, Books I and II (1667), edited by Anna Baldwin (1998), lines 283-91, p. 9.
Oh dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse
Without all hope of day!
Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse
Without all hope of day!
— John Milton
Samson Agonistes (1671), lines 80-2.
The invention all admired, and each how he
To be the inventor missed; so easy it seemed,
Once found, which yet unfounded most would have thought,
Impossible!
To be the inventor missed; so easy it seemed,
Once found, which yet unfounded most would have thought,
Impossible!
— John Milton
Paradise Lost, Part VI, ll. 478-501 (1667)
See also: | Invention (93)
There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisner to the inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licencers thought.
Recounting the tyranny of the inquisition that Milton had seen for himself in Italy. When he visited in 1640, he was age 30, and Galileo was age 77 and nearly blind.
Recounting the tyranny of the inquisition that Milton had seen for himself in Italy. When he visited in 1640, he was age 30, and Galileo was age 77 and nearly blind.
— John Milton
'Proof.—The servile condition of learning in Italy, the home of licencing.' Areopagitica; A Speech of Mr John Milton to the Parlament of England (24 Nov 1644), editted by Edward Arber (1868), 60.
Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.
— John Milton
The Homiletic Review, Vol. 83-84 (1922), Vol. 83, 208.
