Top 100 John Donne Quotes
#2. Since you would save none of me, I bury some of you.
John Donne
#3. Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie Flat on this bed.
John Donne
#4. Send me nor this, nor that, to increase my store,
But swear thou think'st I love thee, and no more.
John Donne
#5. Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.
John Donne
#6. I have done one braver thing than all the Worthies did, and yet a braver thence doth spring, which is, to keep that hid.
John Donne
#7. Changed loves are but changed sorts of meat,
And when he hath the kernel eat,
Who doth not fling away the shell?
John Donne
#8. Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it.
John Donne
#9. Though truth and falsehood be Near twins, yet truth a little elder is.
John Donne
#10. And what is so intricate, so entangling as death? Who ever got out of a winding sheet?
John Donne
#11. There is in every miracle a silent chiding of the world, and a tacit reprehension of them who require, or who need miracles.
John Donne
#12. Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant;
the only harmless great thing.
John Donne
#13. When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.
John Donne
#14. All other things to their destruction draw, Only our love hath no decay ...
John Donne
#15. The distance from nothing to a little, is ten thousand times more, than from it to the highest degree in this life.
John Donne
#16. But think that we Are but turned aside to sleep.
John Donne
#17. Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes.
John Donne
#18. Chastity is not chastity in an old man, but a disability to be unchaste.
John Donne
#19. 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?
John Donne
#20. I did best when I had least truth for my subjects.
John Donne
#21. There is hook in every benefit, that sticks in his jaws that takes that benefit, and draws him whither the benefactor will.
John Donne
#22. Hee that hath all can have no more
John Donne
#23. Yesternight the sun went hence, And yet is here today.
John Donne
#24. We can die by it, if not live by love, And if unfit for tombs and hearse Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; And if no peace of chronicle we prove, We'll build in sonnet pretty rooms; As well a well wrought urne becomes The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs.
John Donne
#25. If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
John Donne
#26. That thou remember them, some claim as debt; I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.
John Donne
#27. For this, Love is enraged with me;
Yet kills not. If I must example be
To future rebels, if the unborn
Must learn by my being cut up and torn,
Kill and dissect me, Love; for this
Torture against thine own end is:
Racked carcasses make ill anatomies
John Donne
#28. The flea, though he kill none, he does all the harm he can.
John Donne
#29. For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love
John Donne
#30. As God loves a cheerful giver, so he also loves a cheerful taker. Who takes hold of his gifts with a glad heart.
John Donne
#31. 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.
John Donne
#32. As he that fears God fears nothing else, so he that sees God sees everything else.
John Donne
#33. Death is an ascension to a better library.
John Donne
#34. If that be simply perfectest
Which can by no way be expresst
But negatives, my love is so.
To All, which all love, I say no.
Negative Love
John Donne
#35. But he who loveliness within Hath found, all outward loathes, For he who color loves, and skin, Loves but their oldest clothes.
John Donne
#36. Sir, more than kisses,
letters mingle souls;
For, thus friends absent speak.
John Donne
#37. Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me, why plowing, building, ruling and the rest, or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest, by cursed Cain's race invented be, and blest Seth vexed us with Astronomy.
John Donne
#38. 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.
John Donne
#39. 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.
John Donne
#40. As soon as there was two there was pride.
John Donne
#41. If poisonous minerals, and if that tree, Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us, If lecherous goats, if serpents envious Cannot be damned; alas; why should I be?
John Donne
#42. 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.
John Donne
#43. Eternity is not an everlasting flux of time, but time is as a short parenthesis in a long period.
John Donne
#44. Pleasure is none, if not diversified.
John Donne
#45. Of all the commentaries on the Scriptures, good examples are the best.
John Donne
#46. Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven.
John Donne
#47. 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.
John Donne
#49. At one blood labors to beget,
Spirits as like as it can,
Because such figures need to knit,
that subtle knot which makes us man.
John Donne
#50. My world's both parts, and 'o! Both parts must die.
John Donne
#51. 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.
John Donne
#52. Solitude is a torment which is not threatened in hell itself.
John Donne
#53. 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!
John Donne
#54. And who understands? Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all.
John Donne
#55. It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
John Donne
#56. 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.
John Donne
#57. And swear No where Lives a woman true, and fair.
John Donne
#58. 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.
John Donne
#59. 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.
John Donne
#60. 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.
John Donne
#61. Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring makes it more.
John Donne
#62. That soul that can reflect upon itself, consider itself, is more than so.
John Donne
#63. The day breaks not, it is my heart.
John Donne
#64. 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.
John Donne
#65. The Phoenix riddle hath more wit By us, we two being one, are it. So to one neutral thing both sexes fit, We die and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love.
John Donne
#66. How imperfect is all our knowledge!
John Donne
#67. But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space.
John Donne
#68. Out of a fired ship, which by no way
But drowning could be rescued from the flame,
Some men leap'd forth, and ever as they came
Near the foes' ships, did by their shot decay;
So all were lost, which in the ship were found,
They in the sea being burnt, they in the burnt ship drown'd.
John Donne
#69. Great sins are great possessions; but levities and vanities possess us too; and men had rather part with Christ than with any possession.
John Donne
#70. Any man's death diminishes me, for I am involved with mankind.
John Donne
#71. How many times go we to comedies, to masques, to places of great and noble resort, nay even to church only to see the company.
John Donne
#72. I think it mercy if Thou wilt forget.
John Donne
#73. Enjoyment always has a spoiling, otherwise it cannot be so.
John Donne
#74. I am the dust and the ashes of the temple of the Holy Ghost, and what marble is so precious? But I am more than dust and ashes: I am my best part, I am my soul.
John Donne
#75. I find no abhorring in my appetite.
John Donne
#76. Send home my long strayed eyes to me, Which (Oh) too long have dwelt on thee.
John Donne
#77. Without outward declarations, who can conclude an inward love?
John Donne
#78. Contemplative and bookish men must of necessity be more quarrelsome than others, because they contend not about matter of fact, nor can determine their controversies by any certain witnesses, nor judges. But as long as they go towards peace, that is Truth, it is no matter which way.
John Donne
#79. Whatever dies was not mixed equally, If our two loves be one Or thou and I love so alike That none can slacken, none can die.
John Donne
#80. Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For, he tames it, that fetters it in verse.
John Donne
#81. 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.
John Donne
#82. I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease.
John Donne
#83. Oft from new truths, and new phrase, new doubts grow, As strange attire aliens the men we know.
John Donne
#84. Thy firmness makes my circle just,
and makes me end where I begun.
John Donne
#85. But, O alas! so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?
John Donne
#86. 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.
John Donne
#87. But come bad chance
And wee joyne to it our strength
And wee teach it art and length
It selfe o'er us to advance.
John Donne
#88. God himself took a day to rest in, and a good man's grave is his Sabbath.
John Donne
#89. Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right,
By these we reach divinity
John Donne
#90. He that desires to print a book, should much more desire, to be a book.
John Donne
#91. To be no part of any body, is to be nothing.
John Donne
#92. And to 'scape stormy days, I choose an everlasting night.
John Donne
#93. Thou art 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?
John Donne
#94. 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.
John Donne
#95. Be more than man, or thou'rt less than an ant.
John Donne
#96. Men have conceived a twofold use of sleep; it is a refreshing of the body in this life, and a preparing of the soul for the next.
John Donne
#97. That subtle knot which makes us man So must pure lovers souls descend T affections, and to faculties, Which sense may reach and apprehend, Else a great Prince in prison lies.
John Donne
#98. He must pull out his own eyes, and see no creature, before he can say, he sees no God; He must be no man, and quench his reasonable soul, before he can say to himself, there is no God.
John Donne
#99. Oh do not die, for I shall hate All women so, when thou art gone.
John Donne
#100. Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love.
John Donne
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