John donne quotes

Poetry is a counterfeit creation, and makes things that are not, as though they were

Love's mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book.

We study health, and we deliberate upon our meats and drink and air and exercises, and we hew and we polish every stone that goes to that building; and so our health is a long and regular work. But in a minute a cannon batters all, overthrows all, demolishes all; a sickness unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiosity, nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroys us in an instant.

Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I shall not live 'till I see God; and when I have seen Him, I shall never die.

Festive alcohol sometimes leads to an excess of honesty.

Now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated....As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee

I do not love a man, except I hate his vices, because those vices are the enemies, and the destruction of that friend whom I love.

The rich have no more of the kingdom of heaven than they have purchased of the poor by their alms.

If we consider eternity, into that time never entered; eternity is not an everlasting flux of time, but time is as a short parenthesis in a long period; and eternity had been the same as it is, though time had never been.

For love all love of other sights controls and makes one little room an everywhere

Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven.

O Lord, never suffer us to think that we can stand by ourselves, and not need thee.

God himself took a day to rest in, and a good man's grave is his Sabbath.

Nature hath no goal though she hath law.

Great sorrows cannot speak.

Solitude is a torment which is not threatened in hell itself.

Friends are ourselves.

How much shall I be changed, before I am changed!

Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing.

I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in, and invite God, and his Angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his Angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.

Commemoration of Pandita Mary Ramabai, Translator of the Scriptures, 1922 A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a fear of tomorrow's dangers, a straw under my knees, a noise in my ear, a light in my eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayers.

Without outward declarations, who can conclude an inward love?

The day breaks not, it is my heart.

There is hook in every benefit, that sticks in his jaws that takes that benefit, and draws him whither the benefactor will.

All occasions invite His mercies, and all times are His seasons.

To know and feel all this and not have the words to express it makes a human a grave of his own thoughts.

Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.

When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.

The whole life of Christ was a continual Passion; others die martyrs but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for to his tenderness then the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after, and the manger as uneasy at first as his cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of one and the same day. And as even his birth is his death, so every action and passage that manifests Christ to us is his birth, for Epiphany is manifestation.

Nothing but man of all envenomed things, doth work upon itself, with inborn stings.

Religion is not a melancholy, the spirit of God is not a damper.

Sweetest love, I do not go, For weariness of thee, Nor in hope the world can show A fitter love for me; But since that I Must die at last, 'tis best, To use my self in jest Thus by feign'd deaths to die.

More than kisses, letters mingle souls.

God affords no man the comfort, the false comfort of Atheism: He will not allow a pretending Atheist the power to flatter himself, so far, as to seriously think there is no God.

Keep us, Lord, so awake in the duties of our calling that we may sleep in thy peace and wake in thy glory.

One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so.

I sing the progress of a deathless soul.

Our two souls therefore which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat.

This only is charity, to do all, all that we can.

Our critical day is not the very day of our death; but the whole course of our life.

Full nakedness! All my joys are due to thee, as souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, to taste whole joys.

As he that fears God fears nothing else, so he that sees God sees everything else.

In the first minute that my soul is infused, the Image of God is imprinted in my soul; so forward is God in my behalf, and so early does he visit me.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.

When I died last, and, Dear, I die As often as from thee I go Though it be but an hour ago, And lovers' hours be full eternity.

So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, Angels affect us often.

True joy is the earnest which we have of heaven, it is the treasure of the soul, and therefore should be laid in a safe place, and nothing in this world is safe to place it in.

As states subsist in part by keeping their weaknesses from being known, so is it the quiet of families to have their chancery and their parliament within doors, and to compose and determine all emergent differences there.

Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes.

There is nothing that God hath established in a constant course of nature, and which therefore is done every day, but would seem a Miracle, and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once.

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.

God is so omnipresent. . . . God is an angel in an angel, and a stone in a stone, and a straw in a straw.

Doth not a man die even in his birth? The breaking of prison is death, and what is our birth, but a breaking of prison?

I shall die reading; since my book and a grave are so near.

Be more than man, or thou'rt less than an ant.

Love was as subtly caught, as a disease; But being got it is a treasure sweet, which to defend is harder than to get: And ought not be profaned on either part, for though 'Tis got by chance, 'Tis kept by art.

The sun must not set upon anger, much less will I let the sun set upon the anger of God towards me.

As God loves a cheerful giver, so he also loves a cheerful taker. Who takes hold of his gifts with a glad heart.

Pleasure is none, if not diversified.

Between cowardice and despair, valour is gendred.

God made sun and moon to distinguish the seasons, and day and night; and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons. But God hath made no decrees to distinguish the seasons of His mercies. In Paradise the fruits were ripe the first minute, and in heaven it is always autumn. His mercies are ever in their maturity.

Love is strong as death; but nothing else is as strong as either; and both, love and death, met in Christ. How strong and powerful upon you, then, should that instruction be, that comes to you from both these, the love and death of Jesus Christ!

Take me to you, imprison me, for I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free, nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

The distance from nothing to a little, is ten thousand times more, than from it to the highest degree in this life.

Christ beats his drum, but he does not press men; Christ is served with voluntaries.

Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.

How imperfect is all our knowledge!

Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we lov'd?

Then love is sin, and let me sinful be.

Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.

Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, With silken lines, and silver hooks.

All mankind is one volume. When one man dies, a chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language. And every chapter must be translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice. But God's hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall live open to one another

Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right, By these we reach divinity

What if this present were the world's last night?

If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

Good is not good, unless A thousand it possess, But doth waste with greediness.

I have done one braver thing than all the Worthies did, and yet a braver thence doth spring, which is, to keep that hid.

. . . Change is the nursery Of musicke, joy, life and eternity.

The flea, though he kill none, he does all the harm he can.

Art is the most passionate orgy within man's grasp.

As soon as there was two there was pride.

How great love is, presence best trial makes, But absence tries how long this love will be.

we give each other a smile with a future in it

I count all that part of my life lost which I spent not in communion with God, or in doing good.

Goe and catche a falling starre, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me, where all past yeares are, Or who cleft the Divel's foot. Teach me to hear Mermaides' singing, Or to keep of envies stinging, And finde What winde Serves to advance an honest minde.

Women are like the arts, forced unto none, Open to all searchers, unprized, if unknown.

Young men mend not their sight by using old men's spectacles.

I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease.

To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend, All is the purlieu of the god of love.

Men perish with whispering sins-nay, with silent sins, sins that never tell the conscience that they are sins, as often with crying sins; and in hell there shall meet as many men that never thought what was sin, as that spent all their thoughts in the compassing of sin.

He that desires to print a book, should much more desire, to be a book.

In heaven it is always autumn.

Only our love hath no decay; this, no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday, running it never runs from us away, but truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

Sleep with clean hands, either kept clean all day by integrity or washed clean at night by repentance.

Poor intricated soul! Riddling, perplexed, labyrinthical soul!

Death is an ascension to a better library.

God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice.

Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so. For, those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow. Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

Who are a little wise the best fools be.

Sleep is pain's easiest salve

Man is not only a contributory creature, but a total creature; he does not only make one, but he is all; he is not a piece of the world, but the world itself, and next to the glory of God, the reason why there is a world.

Eternity is not an everlasting flux of time, but time is as a short parenthesis in a long period.

No man is an island unto himself.

I am a little world made cunningly.

If I dream I have you, I have you, for all our joys are but fantastical.

Chastity is not chastity in an old man, but a disability to be unchaste.

And what is so intricate, so entangling as death? Who ever got out of a winding sheet?

Death, thou shalt die.

Of all the commentaries on the Scriptures, good examples are the best.

Thy face is mine eye, and mine is thine.

A man that is not afraid of a Lion is afraid of a Cat .

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

We love and understand talent; we wish it be within us. The truly gifted, those exceptional few, must wait for the world to catch up.

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Licence my roving hands, and let them go Before, behind, between, above, below.

Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth if th' other do. And though it in the center sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. Suth wilt thou be to me, who must Like th' other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I began.

For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love.

And now good morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear; For love, all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room, an everywhere. Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone, Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown, Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

To be no part of any body, is to be nothing.