Paradise Lost Book 9 Quotes

Who aspires must down as low
As high he soar’d.

Go in thy native innocence, rely On what thou hast of virtue, summon all, For God towards thee hath done his part, do thine.

Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely: and pined his loss

Hung over her enamour’d, and beheld Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep, Shot forth peculiar graces.

Pandemonium, the high capital Of Satan and his peers.

Pleas’d me, long choosing and beginning late.

Me miserable! Which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threat’ning to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.

Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.

For contemplation he and valour formed; / For softness she and sweet attractive grace, / He for God only, she for God in him: / His fair large front and eye sublime declared / Absolute rule.

His spear, to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills to be the mast Of some great ammiral were but a wand, He walk’d with to support uneasy steps Over the burning marle.

So glistered the dire Snake , and into fraud Led Eve, our credulous mother, to the Tree Of Prohibition, root of all our woe.

And the more I see Pleasures about me, so much more I feel Torment within me.

Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit/Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste/Brought death into the world, and all our woe,/With loss of Eden, till one greater Man/Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,/Sing heavenly muse

Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n.

Knowledge forbidden? Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord Envy them that? Can it be a sin to know? Can it be death?

Now conscience wakes despair That slumber’d,-wakes the bitter memory Of what he was, what is, and what must be Worse.

What reinforcement we may gain from hope;
If not, what resolution from despair.