“Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years.”
Carl Sandburg
“The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it.”
William Blake
“Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.”
Don Marquis
“Read not Milton, for he is dry; nor Shakespeare, for he wrote of common life.”
C. S. Calverley
“The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything.”
William Hazlitt
“After the erection of the Chinese Wall of Milton, blank verse has suffered not only arrest but retrogression.”
T.S. Eliot
“I'd like see an ad with somebody listening to Mozart and reading Milton or Shakespeare.”
Charles Moskos
