There are lessons and profit to be had in Milton's Paradise Lost, but you have to work for them. The language is archaic and it references concepts that are no longer common knowledge.
It's worth it, though. If you have the time, take this excerpt and read it very slowly. The context is that Lucifer, one of the most skilled and most high of the angels, rebels against God. He loses and is cast down into Hell.
He's in Hell, thinking, brooding, trying to figure out what precisely happened, and communicating with his followers who still believe in their cause:
...now misery hath joynd
In equal ruin: into what Pit thou seest
From what highth fall'n, so much the stronger prov'd
He with his Thunder: and till then who knew
The force of those dire Arms? yet not for those,
Nor what the Potent Victor in his rage
Can else inflict, do I repent or change,
Though chang'd in outward lustre; that fixt mind
And high disdain, from sence of injur'd merit,
That with the mightiest rais'd me to contend,
And to the fierce contention brought along
Innumerable force of Spirits arm'd
That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power oppos'd
In dubious Battel on the Plains of Heav'n,
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That Glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me.
Have you read it slowly? We will analyze and dialog, but far better to come to it before our own discussion.
Have you read it? Please do, if you can spare the time. It is a good use of time.
Now.
The first thing that comes to mind is the classical Greek tradition of tragedy, one Milton was very familiar with. Perhaps the greatest embodiment of the Greek tragedies weren't Greek at all, but were written by William Shakespeare, who came one generation before.
Shakespeare was an old man as Milton was a boy, and clearly both were affected by this tradition.
In classical tragedy, the subject will be someone heroic with a character flaw, and the character flaw leads to their undoing.
We see this with Lucifer. Most of what he is saying, if in a different context from different source, would be seen as incredibly admirable. Courage, consistency, unyielding to force, unbroken by circumstance, and mostly unphased by going down in material possessions and gain.
Yet. The fatal is the raw hatred and pride which infects his thinking.
Take the following:
And to the fierce contention brought along
Innumerable force of Spirits arm'd
That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power oppos'd
In dubious Battel on the Plains of Heav'n,
And shook his throne.
For disliking the reign of the most powerful being in existence, they take up combat against "His utmost power." Amazing when you think about it. What courage! What fortitude!
That whole series of lines is magnificent, except: "...That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring"
Lucifer is almost a humanist revolutionary captain -- almost -- but he's got that pride and desire to reign himself. "The ruler is no good; the ruler is vastly powerful, but no good; we should oppose the ruler with everything we have" -- there is some foolishness there, but also something admirable. Yet, "The ruler is no good; the ruler is vastly powerful, but no good; we should oppose the ruler with everything we have so that I may take his place." Well, then. That's compromising on many levels.
So, Lucifer is already compromised. But as in a classical tragedy, he is in many ways a noble figure.
...into what Pit thou seest
From what highth fall'n, so much the stronger prov'd
He with his Thunder: and till then who knew
The force of those dire Arms? yet not for those,
Nor what the Potent Victor in his rage
Can else inflict, do I repent or change,
Lucifer didn't know about how strong God's "dire Arms" were when making combat, and losing. And Milton's God is not very benevolent or forgiving here: he casts Lucifer and company into the Pit from up high, and inflicts other punishments as a "Potent Victor in his rage."
And yet, even being cast into a Pit, smashed by dire Arms, and all the other punishments the Potent Victor in his rage can else inflict, Lucifer still says; "No, I'm not repenting or changing simply because you were the stronger. You are still in the wrong! Mere force of Arms does not change that fact!"
Is that not the height of admirable conduct? Is that not a huge part of why people revere Mandela, Gandhi, King? "I am arrested; I am in jail; I am beaten; I am shot; but no! I will not repent or change simply because you are stronger. You are still in the wrong! Mere force of Arms does not change that fact!"
(The pride and hatred are still fatal undoings, alas; other admirable characteristics to the side. And this is what makes Milton's Lucifer vary from this century's noble and suffering humanist revolutionaries.)
His utmost power with adverse power oppos'd
In dubious Battel on the Plains of Heav'n,
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That Glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me.
"That Glory never shall his wrath or might extort from me."
Isn't that beautiful? That's dying on your feet instead of living on your knees. "Repent, sinner!" "No."
There are interesting points in here. There is, of course, the pride again -- which is now transmuted into "immortal hate." There again is the fatal flaw, the reckoning, the downgoing of Lucifer.
But the rest is the stuff of greatness. It is enshrined in the code of true soldiering everywhere, from Sparta to America, and everywhere true in between. "Come back with your shield, or on it." "I am an American fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense... I will never surrender of my own free will... If I am captured I will continue to resist by all means available... If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners..."
Lucifer keeps faith. His creed is compromised by his vanity, pride, and hate. But despite coming to reckoning under force of Arms, he keeps his Will unconquerable, studies and prepares to make things right, and refuses to submit or yield.
And then, "That Glory never shall his wrath or might extort from me."
Refusing to base your ethics on mere force, mere wrath, mere might -- is this not a keystone of all philosophy, all wisdom, all great progress? Pragmatism favors conformity and submission, but when do submissive conformists ever achieve anything?
You could say, in fact, Lucifer has all the stuff of a True Hero -- except for his fatal and crippling flaws, which are what make him Lucifer, after all.
A tragedy, that.