Top 100 Quotes About John Donne
#1. I was clever enough to know that John Donne was offering something that was awfully enjoyable. I just wasn't clever enough to actually enjoy it.
Wallace Shawn
#2. No man is an island. If you want to blame anybody for poisoning the world with that socialistic idea, blame John Donne.
Timothy Noah
#3. And as if reporting some felony to the police they let you know you were not John Donne.
Ted Hughes
#4. Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Therefore, ask not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee. - John Donne
Meg Cabot
#5. 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.
John Donne
#6. No man is an island,' said John Donne. I feel we are all islands -- in a common sea.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
#7. Comparisons are odious
Cervantes, Christopher Marlowe, John Donne, ect...
Talon Rihai
#8. Society is itself an education in the extrovert values, and rarely has there been a society that has preached them so hard. No man is an island, but how John Donne would writhe to hear how often, and for what reasons, the thought is so tiresomely repeated.
William H. Whyte
#9. I was not really aware of the dystopian genre before I read 'The Handmaid's Tale.' Many poets as well, like John Donne and Emily Dickinson, would be the influences; I specialized in Emily Dickinson at university. Both of those poets have really interesting ways of looking at life and death.
Samantha Shannon
#10. Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail. ~John Donne
Kristen Pierce
#11. All problems have to be solved eventually by ONESELF, and that's where all your lovely John Donne stuff turns out to be a load of crap because, in the last analysis, A MAN IS AN ISLAND
Kenneth Williams
#12. What Shelley's world of Prometheus Unbound really has to fear is not resurrection of Jupiter but the resurrection of John Donne.
Cleanth Brooks
#13. 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.
John Donne
#14. Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.
John Donne
#15. Old grandsires talk of yesterday with sorrow, And for our children we reserve tomorrow.
John Donne
#18. And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, the element of fire is quite put out; the Sun is lost, and the earth, and no mans wit can well direct him where to look for it.
John Donne
#19. Since you would save none of me, I bury some of you.
John Donne
#20. Twice or thrice had I loved thee before I knew thy face or name, so in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, angels affect us oft, and worshiped be.
John Donne
#21. I fix mine eye on thine, and there
Pity my picture burning in thine eye ...
John Donne
#22. If every gnat that flies were an archangel, all that could but tell me that there is a God; and the poorest worm that creeps tells me that.
John Donne
#23. Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie Flat on this bed.
John Donne
#24. Send me nor this, nor that, to increase my store,
But swear thou think'st I love thee, and no more.
John Donne
#25. So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss, Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away.
John Donne
#26. Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.
John Donne
#27. 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
#28. Changed loves are but changed sorts of meat,
And when he hath the kernel eat,
Who doth not fling away the shell?
John Donne
#29. Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be? O wilt thou therefore rise from me? Why should we rise, because 'tis light? Did we lie down, because 'twas night? Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither Should in despite of light keep us together.
John Donne
#30. Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it.
John Donne
#31. Who knows his virtues name or place, hath none.
John Donne
#32. Whoever loves, if he do not propose
The right true end of love, he's one that goes
To sea for nothing but to make him sick.
John Donne
#33. It is too little to call man a little world; Except God, man is a diminutive to nothing.
John Donne
#34. Though truth and falsehood be Near twins, yet truth a little elder is.
John Donne
#35. Let not thy divining heart
Forethink me any ill;
Destiny may take thy part,
And may thy fears fulfill.
John Donne
#36. For love all love of other sights controls and makes one little room an everywhere
John Donne
#37. And what is so intricate, so entangling as death? Who ever got out of a winding sheet?
John Donne
#38. 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
#39. Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfill all the offices of death, except to kill
John Donne
#40. Between cowardice and despair, valour is gendred.
John Donne
#41. Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant;
the only harmless great thing.
John Donne
#42. When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.
John Donne
#43. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two, Thy soul the fixt foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do.
John Donne
#44. All other things to their destruction draw, Only our love hath no decay ...
John Donne
#45. 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.
John Donne
#46. The distance from nothing to a little, is ten thousand times more, than from it to the highest degree in this life.
John Donne
#47. 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.
John Donne
#48. That our affections kill us not, nor dye.
John Donne
#49. But think that we Are but turned aside to sleep.
John Donne
#50. But I do nothing upon myself, and yet I am my own executioner.
John Donne
#51. Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes.
John Donne
#52. Chastity is not chastity in an old man, but a disability to be unchaste.
John Donne
#53. O how feeble is man's power,
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall!
But come bad chance,
And we join to'it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
Itself o'er us to'advance.
John Donne
#54. 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.
John Donne
#55. The rich have no more of the kingdom of heaven than they have purchased of the poor by their alms.
John Donne
#56. 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
#57. I count all that part of my life lost which I spent not in communion with God, or in doing good.
John Donne
#58. To an incompetent judge I must not lie, but I may be silent; to a competent I must answer.
John Donne
#59. I did best when I had least truth for my subjects.
John Donne
#60. There is hook in every benefit, that sticks in his jaws that takes that benefit, and draws him whither the benefactor will.
John Donne
#61. To know and feel all this and not have the words to express it makes a human a grave of his own thoughts.
John Donne
#62. Good is not good, unless A thousand it possess, But doth waste with greediness.
John Donne
#63. Hee that hath all can have no more
John Donne
#64. Yesternight the sun went hence, And yet is here today.
John Donne
#65. 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
#66. If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
John Donne
#67. That thou remember them, some claim as debt; I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.
John Donne
#68. 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
#69. The flea, though he kill none, he does all the harm he can.
John Donne
#70. Busy old fool, unruly Sun, why dost thou thus through windows and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?
John Donne
#71. 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
John Donne
#72. So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, Angels affect us often.
John Donne
#73. Our faults are not seen, But past us; neither felt, but only in The punishment.
John Donne
#74. More than kisses, letters mingle souls.
John Donne
#75. As virtuous men pass mildly away, and whisper to their souls to go, whilst some of their sad friends do say, the breath goes now, and some say no.
John Donne
#76. The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I Abjure my so much loved variety.
John Donne
#77. For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love
John Donne
#78. 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.
John Donne
#79. 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
#80. Women are like the arts, forced unto none, Open to all searchers, unprized, if unknown.
John Donne
#81. 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
#82. To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend, All is the purlieu of the god of love.
John Donne
#83. No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.
[The Autumnal]
John Donne
#84. Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
John Donne
#85. 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.
John Donne
#86. As he that fears God fears nothing else, so he that sees God sees everything else.
John Donne
#87. If I lose at play, I blaspheme; if my fellow loses, he blasphemes. So, God is always the loser.
John Donne
#88. Death is an ascension to a better library.
John Donne
#89. 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
#90. But he who loveliness within Hath found, all outward loathes, For he who color loves, and skin, Loves but their oldest clothes.
John Donne
#91. Sir, more than kisses,
letters mingle souls;
For, thus friends absent speak.
John Donne
#92. Thy sins and hairs may no man equal call,
for as thy sins increase, thy hairs do fall.
John Donne
#93. Can there be worse sickness, than to know that we are never well, nor can be so?
John Donne
#94. 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.
John Donne
#95. 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
#96. 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
#97. 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
#98. 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.
John Donne
#99. Full nakedness! All my joys are due to thee, as souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, to taste whole joys.
John Donne
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