John Donne Quotes

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.

In heaven it is always autumn.

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

Sleep is pain's easiest salve

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

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

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

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

Since you would save none of me, I bury some of you.

Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

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.

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

For I am every dead thing In whom love wrought new alchemy For his art did express A quintessence even from nothingness, From dull privations, and lean emptiness He ruined me, and I am re-begot Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not.

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

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.

Doth not a man die even in his birth? The breaking of prison is death, and what is our birth, but a breaking of prison?

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

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

Between cowardice and despair, valour is gendred.

Without outward declarations, who can conclude an inward love?

No man is an island unto himself.

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

Up then, fair phoenix bride, frustrate the sun; Thyself from thine affection Takest warmth enough, and from thine eye All lesser birds will take their jollity. Up, up, fair bride, and call Thy stars from out their several boxes, take Thy rubies, pearls, and diamonds forth, and make Thyself a constellation of them all; And by their blazing signify That a great princess falls, but doth not die. Be thou a new star, that to us portends Ends of much wonder; and be thou those ends.

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

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.