John Donne quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by John Donne

John Donne Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from John Donne on Wise Famous Quotes.

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

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

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

I find no abhorring in my appetite.

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

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

Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.

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

Love, built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.

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

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.

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

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

My love though silly is more brave.

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

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

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

Our faults are not seen, But past us; neither felt, but only in The punishment.

No man is an island.

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

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

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.

But think that we Are but turned aside to sleep.

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

No man is an island unto himself.

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

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.

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.

The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I Abjure my so much loved variety.

In Heaven, it is always Autumn".

That our affections kill us not, nor dye.

Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfill all the offices of death, except to kill

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

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

Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it.

And dare love that, and say so too, And forget the He and She.

And who understands? Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all.

Enjoyment always has a spoiling, otherwise it cannot be so.

Hee that hath all can have no more

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

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

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.

Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Who knows his virtues name or place, hath none.

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

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.

Sir, more than kisses,
letters mingle souls;
For, thus friends absent speak.

Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.

Can there be worse sickness, than to know that we are never well, nor can be so?

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

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

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

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

As peace is of all goodness, so war is an emblem, a hieroglyphic, of all misery.

It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;

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.

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

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

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

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

As soon as there was two there was pride.

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

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

The Psalms foretell what I, what any shall do and suffer and say.

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

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

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.

Friends are ourselves.

Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring makes it more.

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

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

Oh do not die, for I shall hate All women so, when thou art gone.

Who are a little wise the best fools be.

Thy firmness makes my circle just,
and makes me end where I begun.

Festive alcohol sometimes leads to an excess of honesty.

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

Yesternight the sun went hence, And yet is here today.

The day breaks not, it is my heart.

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

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

Kind pity chokes my spleen.

Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For, he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

No man is an island, entire of itself.

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

Great sorrows cannot speak.

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

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

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

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