I will not deny but that the best apology against false accusers is silence and sufferance, and honest deeds set against dishonest words.
Interpretation
Silence and good actions are the best responses to false accusations.
In this quote, John Milton expresses the idea that responding to slander should not entail engaging in confrontation or rebuttal. Instead, enduring the falsehoods with resilience and demonstrating integrity through honest actions serve as a more powerful and effective means of addressing the wrongs of accusers.
In practice
This quote can inspire someone facing workplace gossip to focus on their work rather than reacting to slander.
They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms: Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide; They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.
The stars, that nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps with everlasting oil, give due light to the misled and lonely traveller.
Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones.
Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely: and pined his loss
The end of all learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love and imitate Him.
Apt words have power to suage the tumors of a troubled mind.
The terrible thing about free soloing difficult routes that are within one's capacity, is the chance that faced with ultimate danger and need for ultimate self-control, one's nerve might fail and cause an error. That's irony of it - that fear could short-circiut skill, that one would die as a direcy result of being afraid to die.
...for the first time in my life, a voice went off in my head:'You have no power over what happens in your life. Drugs dictate exactly what you're going to do. You've taken your hands off the steering wheel, and you're going wherever the drug world takes you.' That had never changed. The feeling would well up inside of me, and no matter how much I loved my girl or my band or my friends or my family, when that siren song 'Go get high now' started playing in my head, I was off.
I always liked to chase the girls. Parkinson's stops all that. Now I might have a chance to go to heaven.
No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body.
One cannot answer for his courage when he has never been in danger.
All of us feel, I think, that our experiences can be the worst possible thing you can go through and that we're alone in it, which is isolating and intense and insurmountable. But we can get over it.
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