John Milton

1608–1674 · English poet & polemicist

John Milton (1608–1674) was an English poet and republican pamphleteer, best known for the blank-verse epic Paradise Lost (1667), which retells the Fall of Man. Blind for the last two decades of his life, he dictated the poem to amanuenses. His Satan — eloquent, defiant, self-deceiving — became one of the most debated characters in English literature, and lines like this one are among the most quoted in the language.

Traced to source

2 quotes we’ve traced to John Milton

“Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven”

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“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven”

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