John Donne Quotes - Page 3

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

In best understandings, sin began, Angels sinned first, then Devils, and then Man.

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

A mathematical point is the most indivisble and unique thing which art can present.

• John Donne / Poet

That thou remember them, some claim as debt; I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfil All offices of death, except to kill.

• John Donne / Poet

I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call and invite God and his angels thither.

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

Love is a growing, or full constant light; And his first minute, after noon, is night.

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

To roam Giddily, and be everywhere but at home, Such freedom doth a banishment become.

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

Let man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this, The intelligence that moves, devotion is.

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

Never start with tomorrow to reach eternity. Eternity is not being reached by small steps.

• John Donne / Poet

Man hath weaved out a net, and this net throwne upon the Heavens, and now they are his own.

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

Oft from new truths, and new phrase, new doubts grow, As strange attire aliens the men we know.

• John Donne / Poet

If I lose at play, I blaspheme; if my fellow loses, he blasphemes. So, God is always the loser.

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

That which attempts to elevate the ugly to the level of beauty becomes neither; but an obscenity.

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

Doubt wisely; in strange way To stand inquiring right, is not to stray; To sleep, or run wrong, is.

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

O how feeble is man's power, that if good fortune fall, cannot add another hour, nor a lost hour recall!

• John Donne / Poet

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 / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

I neglect God and his angles for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.

• John Donne / Poet

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

• John Donne / Poet

On a huge hill, Cragged, and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will Reach her, about must, and about must goo.