John Donne Quotes

205 Sourced Quotes

Without outward declarations, who can conclude an inward love?

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

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

John Donne
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.

John Donne
And in these Constellations then arise New Starres, and old doe vanish from our eyes.

John Donne
In that glistering circle in the firmament, which we call the Galaxie, the milkie way, there is not one starre of any of the six great magnitudes, which Astronomers proceed upon, belonging to that circle: it is a glorious circle, and possesseth a great part of heaven, and yet is all of so little starres, as have no name, no knowledge taken of them.

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

John Donne
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
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.

John Donne
If then th' Astronomers, whereas they spie A new-found Starre, their Opticks magnifie, How brave are those, who with their Engine, can Bring man to heaven, and heaven againe to man?

John Donne
Between these two, the denying of sins, which we have done, and the bragging of sins, which we have not done, what a space, what a compass is there, for millions of millions of sins!

John Donne
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
And then that heaven, which spreads so farre, as that subtill men have, with some appearance of probabilitie, imagined, that in that heaven, in those manifold Sphere of the Planets and the Starres, there are many earths, many worlds, as big as this which we inhabit...

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

John Donne
Religion is not a melancholy, the spirit of God is not a damper.

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

John Donne
And if there be any addition to knowledge, it is rather a new knowledge than a greater knowledge; rather a singularity in a desire of proposing something that was not knownat all beforethananimproving, anadvancing, a multiplying of former inceptions; and by that means, no knowledge comes to be perfect.

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

John Donne
A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a fear of tomorrow's dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayer. So certainly is there nothing, nothing in spiritual things, perfect in this world.

John Donne
There is no health; physicians say that we, at best, enjoy but neutrality.

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

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

John Donne
Licence my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O, my America, my Newfoundland
My kingdom, safest when with one man mann'd,
My mine of precious stones, my empery;
How am I blest in thus discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free ;
Then, where my hand is set, my soul shall be.

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

John Donne
License my roving hands, and let them go,
Behind, before, above, between, below.
O my America, my new found land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned.

John Donne
Stand still, and I will read to thee
A lecture, love, in love's philosophy.

John Donne
I know not what fear is, nor I know not what it is that I fear now; I fear not the hastening of my death, and yet I do fear the increase of the disease... my weakness is from nature, who hath but her measure, my strength is from God, who possesses and distributes infinitely.

John Donne
Who ever 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
I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him merely seize me, and only declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwreck, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotency might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.

John Donne
Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right, By these we reach divinity

John Donne