Him the Almighty Power — Paradise Lost

"Sing Heavnly Muse, that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed, In the Beginning how the Heavns and Earth Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill Delight thee more, and Siloas Brook that flowd Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above th Aonian Mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime."

"What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the height of this great argument I may assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men."

"For who can yet believe, though after loss, That all these puissant legions, whose exile Hath emptied Heaven, shall fail to re-ascend, Self-raised, and repossess their native seat?"

"With grave Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven Deliberation sat and public care; And princely counsel in his face yet shone, Majestic though in ruin: sage he stood, With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look Drew audience and attention still as night Or summers noontide air."

"Who overcomes By force, hath overcome but half his foe."

"The infernal serpent; he it was, whose guile, Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived The mother of mankind."

"Now Art, used collectively for painting, sculpture, architecture and music, is the mediatress between, and reconciler of, nature and man. It is, therefore, the power of humanizing nature, of infusing the thoughts and passions of man into everything which is the object of his contemplation."

"The Good consists in the congruity of a thing with the laws of the reason and the nature of the will, and in its fitness to determine the latter to actualize the former: and it is always discursive. The Beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutive rules of the judgment and imagination: and it is always intuitive."

"I believe that the unity of man as opposed to other living things derives from the fact that man is the conscious life of himself. Man is conscious of himself, of his future, which is death, of his smallness, of his impotence; he is aware of others as others; man is in nature, subject to its laws even if he transcends it with his thought."

"Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flower Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God! God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!"

"All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair — The bees are stirring — birds are on the wing — And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing."

"Taste is the intermediate faculty which connects the active with the passive powers of our nature, the intellect with the senses; and its appointed function is to elevate the images of the latter, while it realizes the ideas of the former."