{"quotes":[{"text":"The portraits, of more historical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the blue and bronze of peacocks, fell over the doors, and shut out all history and activity untouched with beauty and peace; and now when I looked at my Crevelli and pondered on the rose in the hand of the Virgin, wherein the form was so delicate and precise that it seemed more like a thought than a flower, or at the grey dawn and rapturous faces of my Francesca, I knew all a Christian's ecstasy without his slavery to rule and custom; when I pondered over the antique bronze gods and goddesses, which I had mortgaged my house to buy, I had all a pagan's delight in various beauty and without his terror at sleepless destiny and his labour with many sacrifices; and I had only to go to my bookshelf, where every book was bound in leather, stamped with intricate ornament, and of a carefully chosen colour: Shakespeare in the orange of the glory of the world, Dante in the dull red of his anger, Milton in the blue grey of his formal calm; and I could experience what I would of human passions without their bitterness and without satiety. I had gathered about me all gods because I believed in none, and experienced every pleasure because I gave myself to none, but held myself apart, individual, indissoluble, a mirror of polished steel: I looked in the triumph of this imagination at the birds of Hera, glowing in the firelight as though they were wrought of jewels; and to my mind, for which symbolism was a necessity, they seemed the doorkeepers of my world, shutting out all that was not of as affluent a beauty as their own; and for a moment I thought as I had thought in so many other moments, that it was possible to rob life of every bitterness except the bitterness of death; and then a thought which had followed this thought, time after time, filled me with a passionate sorrow.","author":"W.B. Yeats","tags":["books","christianity","dante","death","god","gods","milton","pagan","paganism","shakespeare"],"id":16551,"author_id":"W.B.+Yeats"},{"text":"All that can best be expressed in words should be expressed in verse, but verse is a slow thing to create; nay, it is not really created: it is a secretion of the mind, it is a pearl that gathers round some irritant and slowly expresses the very essence of beauty and of desire that has lain long, potential and unexpressed, in the mind of the man who secretes it. God knows that this Unknown Country has been hit off in verse a hundred times...Milton does it so well in the Fourth Book of Paradise Lost that I defy any man of a sane understanding to read the whole of that book before going to bed and not to wake up next morning as though he had been on a journey.","author":"Hilaire Belloc","tags":["beauty","desire","milton","paradise-lost","poetry","verse","words","writing"],"id":60903,"author_id":"Hilaire+Belloc"},{"text":"What kind of dark, twisted mind preys on young women? I think it was Poe that said the death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical thing in the universe, and if that was true… I was John Milton.","author":"Bruce Crown","tags":["allen","beautiful-woman","death","edgar","john","milton","murder","poe","predator","prey"],"id":152518,"author_id":"Bruce+Crown"},{"text":"The mind is a universe and can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.","author":"John Milton","tags":["heaven-and-hell","hell","lost","milton","paradise"],"id":189400,"author_id":"John+Milton"},{"text":"I saw a lot of men die there. Most men. Do you know what killed them?”…”Despair,” said Finney. “They believed themselves to be prisoners. I lived with those men, ate the same maggot-infested food, slept in the same beds, did the same back-breaking work. But they died and I lived. Do you know why?” “You were free.” “I was free. Milton was right…the mind is its own place. I was never a prisoner. Not then, not now.","author":"Louise Penny","tags":["being-free","death","despair","milton","mind-is-free","mind-is-its-own-place","prisoners","what-kills-us"],"id":222153,"author_id":"Louise+Penny"},{"text":"They changed their minds, Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell.","author":"John Milton","tags":["blind-poet","epic-poem","john","milton","paradise-lost","satan"],"id":239260,"author_id":"John+Milton"},{"text":"So spake the enemy of mankind, enclosedIn serpent, inmate bad! And toward EveAddressed his way: not with indented wave,Prone on the ground, as since; but on his rear,Circular base of rising folds, that toweredFold above fold, a surging maze! His headCrested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes;With burnished neck of verdant gold, erectAmidst his circling spires, that on the grassFloated redundant: pleasing was his shapeAnd lovely; never since of serpent-kindLovelier….","author":"John Milton","tags":["milton","paradise-lost","satan"],"id":277822,"author_id":"John+Milton"},{"text":"Father, I do acknowledge and confessThat I this honor, I this pomp have broughtTo Dagon, and advanc’d his praises highamong the Heathen round; to God have broughtDishonor, obloquy, and op’d the mouthsOf Idolists, and Atheists[…]The anguish of my Soul, that suffers notMine eye to harbor sleep, or thoughts to rest.This only hope relieves me, that the strifeWith mee hath end.","author":"John Milton","tags":["christianity","milton","samson-agonistes"],"id":322363,"author_id":"John+Milton"},{"text":"The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels \u0026 God, and at liberty when of Devils \u0026 Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.","author":"William Blake","tags":["angels","devil","god","hell","liberty","milton","poetry"],"id":403490,"author_id":"William+Blake"},{"text":"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.","author":"John Berryman","tags":["art","artists","beethoven","goya","literature","luck","milton","ordeals","poetry","titian"],"id":421095,"author_id":"John+Berryman"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":13,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}