John Milton Quotes

Serve God with integrity, and if you achieve no success, at least no sin will lie upon your conscience.

A corrupt practice may be abolished, but a soiled imagination is not easily cleansed.

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be. . . .

Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone.

No client ever had money enough to bribe my conscience or to stop its utterance against wrong, and oppression.

Why do you read many books? The great book is within your heart. Open the pages of this inexhaustible book, the source of all knowledge. You will know everything.

A good conscience is a continual feast.

A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation.

The world will never be in any manner of order or tranquility until men are firmly convinced that conscience, honor and credit are all in one interest

Is it less dishonest to do what is wrong because it is not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy.

I cannot imagine life without books any more than I can imagine life without breathing.

Book - Learning : The dunce's derisive term for all knowledge that transcends his own impertinent ignorance.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy the intercourse with superior minds.

If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.

The shortest way to arrive at glory would be to do that for conscience which we do for glory.

The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience.

It is books that are a key to the wide world; if you can't do anything else, read all that you can.

Do not think that saintliness comes from occupation; it depends rather on what one is. The kind of work we do does not make us holy but we may make it holy. However “sacred” a calling may be, as it is a calling, it has no power to sanctify.

We read many books, because we cannot know enough people.

Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age.

The end of knowledge is wisdom The end of culture is perfection The end of wisdom is freedom The end of education is character. And character consists of eagerness to renounce one's selfish greed.

A library is a place where you learn what teachers were afraid to teach you.

Learning is a good medicine: but no medicine is powerful enough to preserve itself from taint and corruption independently of defects in the jar that it is kept in. One man sees clearly but does not see straight: consequently he sees what is good but fails to follow it; he sees knowledge and does not use it.

Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, "Lighthouses" as the poet said "erected in the sea of time." They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.

For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.