John Donne Quotes

This Extasie doth unperplex (We said) and tell us what we love, Wee see by this, it was not sexe, Wee see, we saw not what did move: But as all severall soules contain Mixture of things, they know not what, Love, these mixt souls, doth mixe againe. Loves mysteries in soules doe grow, But yet the body is his booke.

True and false fears let us refrain,
Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
Years and years unto years, till we attain
To write threescore: this is the second of our reign.

But think that we Are but turned aside to sleep.

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

Changed loves are but changed sorts of meat,
And when he hath the kernel eat,
Who doth not fling away the shell?

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?

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

Let not thy divining heart
Forethink me any ill;
Destiny may take thy part,
And may thy fears fulfill.

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

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

Old grandsires talk of yesterday with sorrow, And for our children we reserve tomorrow.

Pleasure is none, if not diversified.

It is too little to call man a little world; Except God, man is a diminutive to nothing.

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.

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.

At most, the greatest persons are but great wens, and excrescences; men of wit and delightful conversation, but as morals for ornament, except they be so incorporated into the body of the world that they contribute something to the sustentation of the whole.

Hee that hath all can have no more

No man is an island, entire of itself.

To a large degree, since the beginning of time, charisma or the lack of it has impacted upon those in quest of acclaim. As media expands, this has become ever more vital. Thus, demeanor if unappealing, can defeat one's likelihood of success, causing the death of prospects whilst they are still embryonic.

Nature hath no goal, though she hath law.

Send me nor this, nor that, to increase my store,
But swear thou think'st I love thee, and no more.

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

How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be

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

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

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie Flat on this bed.

The day breaks not, it is my heart.

Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.

I call not that virginity a virtue, which resideth onely in the bodies integrity; much less if it be with a purpose of perpetually keeping it: for then it is a most inhumane vice. - But I call that Virginity a virtue which is willing and desirous to yield it self upon honest and lawfull terms, when just reason requireth; and until then, is kept with a modest chastity of body and mind.

That soul that can reflect upon itself, consider itself, is more than so.

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.

This is joy's bonfire, then, where love's strong arts
Make of so noble individual parts
One fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts.

So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss, Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away.

Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,
All just supply, and all relation;
Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot,
For every man alone thinks he hath got
To be a phoenix, and that then can be
None of that kind, of which he is, but he.

Send home my long strayed eyes to me, Which (Oh) too long have dwelt on thee.

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

Without outward declarations, who can conclude an inward love?

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

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

The force of originality "that made Donne so potent an influence in the seventeenth century makes him now at once for us, without his being the less felt as of his period, contemporary - obviously a living poet in the most important sense." In "The Good-Morrow" Leavis said that

The difference between the reason of man and the instinct of the beast is this, that the beast does but know, but the man knows that he knows.

The world is a great volume, and man the index of that book; even in the body of man, you may turn to the whole world.

Kind pity chokes my spleen.

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

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

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

I joy, that in these straits I see my west;

And swear No where Lives a woman true, and fair.

Commemoration of John Donne, Priest, Poet, 1631 He was the Word that spake it; He took the bread and brake it; And what that Word did make it I do believe, and take it.

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

All measure, and all language, I should pass,
Should I tell what a miracle she was.

Between these two, the denying of sins, which we have done, and the bragging of sins, which we have not done, what a space, what a compass is there, for millions of millions of sins!

Men are sponges, which, to pour out, receive;
Who know false play, rather than lose, deceive.
For in best understandings sin began,
Angels sinn'd first, then devils, and then man.
Only perchance beasts sin not ; wretched we
Are beasts in all but white integrity.

Who knows his virtues name or place, hath none.

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.

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

I sing the progress of a deathless soul.

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.

On a huge hill,
Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will
Reach her, about must, and about must goe;
And what the hills suddenness resists, winne so;
Yet strive so, that before age, deaths twilight,
Thy Soule rest, for none can worke in that night.

I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so in whining poetry.

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

Thy face is mine eye, and mine is thine.

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

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
Nor any place be empty quite;
Therefore I think my breast hath all
Those pieces still, though they be not unite;
And now, as broken glasses show
A hundred lesser faces, so
My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
But after one such love, can love no more.

The Good-Morrow

I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I
Did, till we lov'd? Were we not wean'd till then?
But suck'd on countrey pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the seaven sleepers den?
T'was so; But this, all pleasures fancies bee.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desir'd, and got, 'twas but a dreame of thee.

And now good morrow to our waking soules,
Which watch not one another out of feare;
For love, all love of other sights controules,
And makes one little roome, an every where.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let Maps to other, worlds on worlds have showne,
Let us possesse one world; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares,
And true plaine hearts doe in the faces rest,
Where can we finde two better hemispheares
Without sharpe North, without declining West?
What ever dyes, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.

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.

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.

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

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.

All other things to their destruction draw, Only our love hath no decay ...

For I am every dead thing In whom love wrought new alchemy For his art did express A quintessence even from nothingness, From dull privations, and lean emptiness He ruined me, and I am re-begot Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not.

Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me.

Verse hath a middle nature: heaven keeps souls, The grave keeps bodies, verse the fame enrols.

Annunciation

Salvation to all that will is nigh;
That All, which always is all everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo, faithful virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb; and though He there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He will wear,
Taken from thence, flesh, which death's force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created, thou
Wast in His mind, who is thy Son and Brother;
Whom thou conceivst, conceived; yea thou art now
Thy Maker's maker, and thy Father's mother;
Thou hast light in dark, and shuts in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.

Song

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Thought at next door we might meet;
Though she were true when you met her,
And last till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

My world's both parts, and 'o! Both parts must die.

I long to talk with some old lover's ghost, Who died before the god of love was born.

I fix mine eye on thine, and there
Pity my picture burning in thine eye ...

When my mouth shall be filled with dust, and the worm shall feed, and feed sweetly upon me, when the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction if the poorest alive tread upon him, nor the poorest receive any contentment in being made equal to princes, for they shall be equal but in dust.

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.

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.

But he who loveliness within Hath found, all outward loathes, For he who color loves, and skin, Loves but their oldest clothes.

She is all states, and all princes, I.
Nothing else is.

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

Then love is sin, and let me sinful be.

But, O alas! so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?

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.

Poor heretics there be,
Which think to establish dangerous constancy,
But I have told them, 'Since you will be true,
You shall be true to them, who are false to you.

Great sins are great possessions; but levities and vanities possess us too; and men had rather part with Christ than with any possession.

My love though silly is more brave.

Filled with her love, may I be rather grown
Mad with much heart, then idiot with none.

But I do nothing upon myself, and yet I am my own executioner.

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

Friends are ourselves.

Death Be Not Proud
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.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture[s] be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke ; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
Years and years unto years, till we attain
To write threescore: this is the second of our reign
Love was as subtly catched, 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

Stay, O sweet, and do not rise;
The light that shines comes from thine eyes;
The day breaks not, it is my heart,
Because that you and I must part.

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

To an incompetent judge I must not lie, but I may be silent; to a competent I must answer.

By nature, which gave it, this liberty Thou lov'st, but Oh! canst thou love it and me? Likeness glues love: Then if so thou do, To make us like and love, must I change too?