John Milton Quotes


If at great things thou would'st arrive, Get riches first, get wealth, and treasure heap, Not difficult, if thou hearken to me; Riches are mine, fortune is in my hand, They whom I favor thrive in wealth amain, While virtue, valor, wisdom, sit in want.


Citations

Milton, John. Paradise Regain'd. John Macock for John Starkey, 1671, p. 48.

Related Quotes

Likely misattributed. The phrase was popularized by the writer Orville Schell in "To Get Rich Is Glorious: China in the '80s" (1984) but Schell never actually attributed the words to Deng, telling the L.A. Times's Evelyn Iritani in 2004 that it merely "grew out of the zeitgeist" of China's economic reforms.


John Milton
John Milton
  • Born: December 9, 1608
  • Died: November 8, 1674
  • Nationality: English
  • Profession: Poet, Intellectual, Civil Servant

John Milton was an English poet and intellectual who served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious shifts and political instability, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667). Written in blank verse, Paradise Lost is widely considered to be one of the greatest works of literature ever written.