"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
"They called me the hyacinth girl."
--Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed' und leer das Meer.

-T.S. Eliot

"I believe that you are sincere and good at heart. If you do not attain happiness, always remember that you are on the right road, and try not to leave it. Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute. Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself. What seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in yourself. Avoid fear, too, though fear is only the consequence of every sort of falsehood. Never be frightened at your own faint-heartedness in attaining love. Don't be frightened overmuch even at your evil actions. I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labour and fortitude."

-Fyodor Dostoyevsky

on John Milton

London, 1802

Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea;
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

-William Wordsworth


--


In his Paradise Lost--indeed in every one of his poems--it is Milton himself whom you see; his Satan, his Adam, his Raphael, almost his Eve--are all John Milton.

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge


--

MILTON, speaking to himself.
The future is my judge and will understand my Eve, falling, as in a sweet dream, into the night of Hell. The future will understand my Adam, who is guilty, yet good. And the future will understand my indomitable archangel, who is proud of reigning over his own eternity: magnificent in his despair and in his very madness profound. See! He rises from the lake of fire and with his immense wings beats down the waves! Milton shall live in his own thoughts and console himself there. As I silently brood over my audacious, unheard-of design, an ardent genius flames in my breast. Yes! I dare to emulate the Creator Supreme. Through the power of my own words I shall create a whole world: my own Heaven, my own Hell, my own Earth.

-Victor Hugo


--


O many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.

-A.E. Housman