John Donne Quotes

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.

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

And to 'scape stormy days, I choose an everlasting night.

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

All Kings, and all their favorites, All glory of honors, beauties, wits, The sun itself, which makes times, as they pass, Is elder by a year, now, than it was When thou and I first one another saw: All other things, to their destruction draw, Only our love hath no decay; This, no tomorrow hash, nor yesterday, Running, it never runs from us away, But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

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

Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.

I shall die reading; since my book and a grave are so near.

Friends are ourselves.

God affords no man the comfort, the false comfort of Atheism: He will not allow a pretending Atheist the power to flatter himself, so far, as to seriously think there is no God.

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

Other men's crosses are not my crosses.

This only is charity, to do all, all that we can.

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.

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

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.

Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.

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

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

Pleasure is none, if not diversified.

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

All our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death.

And new philosophy calls all in doubt, The element of fire is quite put out; The sun is lost, and the earth, and no man's wit Can well direct him where to look for it. And freely men confess that this world's spent, When in the planets, and the firmament They seek so many new; then see that this Is crumbled out again to his atomies. 'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone; All just supply, and all relation: Prince, subject, Father, Son, are things forgot.

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.

I did best when I had least truth for my subjects.

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

The day breaks not, it is my heart.

My love though silly is more brave.

Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing.

I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so.

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

Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love.

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

I will not look upon the quickening sun, But straight her beauty to my sense shall run; The air shall note her soft, the fire most pure; Water suggest her clear, and the earth sure; Time shall not lose our passages.

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

Festive alcohol sometimes leads to an excess of honesty.

I am a little world made cunningly.

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

Then love is sin, and let me sinful be.

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

Here lies a she sun, and a he moon there; She gives the best light to his sphere; Or each is both, and all, and so They unto one another nothing owe; And yet they do, but are So just and rich in that coin which they pay, That neither would, nor needs forbear, nor stay; Neither desires to be spared nor to spare. They quickly pay their debt, and then Take no acquittances, but pay again; They pay, they give, they lend, and so let fall No such occasion to be liberal. More truth, more courage in these two do shine, Than all thy turtles have and sparrows, Valentine.

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

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.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, With silken lines, and silver hooks.

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's.

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.

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.