The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

Headlong themselves they threw
Down from the verge of heaven, eternal wrath
Burnt after them to the bottomless pit.
‘Paradise Lost’ (1667) bk. 6, l. 864
Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole,
More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged
To hoarse or mute, though fall’n on evil days,
On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues.
‘Paradise Lost’ (1667) bk. 7, l. 23
But drive far off the barbarous dissonance
Of Bacchus and his revellers.
‘Paradise Lost’ (1667) bk. 7, l. 32
Necessity and chance
Approach not me, and what I will is fate.
‘Paradise Lost’ (1667) bk. 7, l. 172
There Leviathan
Hugest of living creatures, on the deep
Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims,
And seems a moving land, and at his gills
Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out a sea.
‘Paradise Lost’ (1667) bk. 7, l. 412
The planets in their stations listening stood,
While the bright pomp ascended jubilant.
Open, ye everlasting gates, they sung,
Open, ye heavens, your living doors; let in
The great creator from his work returned
Magnificent, his six days’ work, a world.
‘Paradise Lost’ (1667) bk. 7, l. 563
He his fabric of the heavens
Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move
His laughter at their quaint opinions wide
Hereafter, when they come to model heaven
And calculate the stars, how they will wield
The mighty frame, how build, unbuild, contrive
To save appearances, how gird the sphere
With centric and eccentric scribbled o’er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb.
‘Paradise Lost’ (1667) bk. 8, l. 76
Heaven is for thee too high
To know what passes there; be lowly wise: