Once upon a time on an afternoon when I should have been doing something else I happened across a copy the Oxford Book of Quotable Quotes or something like that and very entertaining it was and funny what you remember, but this piece seemed to stand out. Mind you it had some competition from Shakespeare and Johnson and Churchill, O'Connell I think, Shelley and many others. I came across a reference to it the other day while slinking through wikipedia and a few other sites and it's actually an excerpt from Areopagitica A speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England, or so they tell me! A quote on virtue. I''ll have to get off this tack.
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| John Milton. From Google Images |
I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue
Unexercised and unbreathed
That never sallies out and sees her adversary
But slinks out of the race
Where that immortal garland is to be run for
Not without dust and heat
Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world
We bring impurity much rather,
That which purifies us is trial
And trial is by what is contrary.
John Milton.
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