The way to achieve your goals is step by step, you just need to build enough track, to be ahead of the train." ~ John Milton Lawrence
The author perceives nuances of Abigail Adams' character in the occasional errors she makes in readily quoting John Milton. Rather than giving the observer a reason to quibble, they are evidence that she had absorbed Milton's works enough to feel comfortable quoting them from memory.
A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold,And pavement stars—as starts to thee appearSoon in the galaxy, that milky wayWhich mightly as a circling zone thou seestPowder'd wiht stars.
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.
John Milton called his school Christ College 'a stony-hearted stepmother'. The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing his education.
Celestial light, shine inward...that I may see and tell of things invisible to mortal sight
Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]1. Homer – Iliad, Odyssey2. The Old Testament3. Aeschylus – Tragedies4. Sophocles – Tragedies5. Herodotus – Histories6. Euripides – Tragedies7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings9. Aristophanes – Comedies10. Plato – Dialogues11. Aristotle – Works12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus13. Euclid – Elements14. Archimedes – Works15. Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections16. Cicero – Works17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things18. Virgil – Works19. Horace – Works20. Livy – History of Rome21. Ovid – Works22. Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia23. Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania24. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic25. Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion26. Ptolemy – Almagest27. Lucian – Works28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties30. The New Testament31. Plotinus – The Enneads32. St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine33. The Song of Roland34. The Nibelungenlied35. The Saga of Burnt Njál36. St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica37. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy38. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks40. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy41. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly42. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres43. Thomas More – Utopia44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises45. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel46. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays48. William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies49. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote50. Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene51. Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis52. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays53. Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences54. Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan57. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy58. John Milton – Works59. Molière – Comedies60. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises61. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics63. John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies65. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe68. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal69. William Congreve – The Way of the World70. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge71. Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws73. Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary74. Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones75. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
For books are not absolutely dead things, but... do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand unless warriors be used, as good almost kill a Man a good Book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills Reason itself, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth; but a good Book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.John MiltonAreopagitica
He who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have attained the utmost prospect of reformation that the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us, till we come to beatific vision, that man by this very opinion declares that he is yet far short of truth.
They changed their minds, Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell.