“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”
More from John Milton
“The mind is its own place, and in it self can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
“But he, though blind of sight, Despised, and thought extinguished quite, With inward eyes…”
“My rising is thy fall.”