John Donne Quotes

205 Sourced Quotes

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

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

John Donne
Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
Years and years unto years, till we attain
To write threescore: this is the second of our reign.

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

John Donne
There is nothing that God hath established in a constant course of nature, and which therefore is done every day, but would seem a Miracle, and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once.

John Donne
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

John Donne
The Phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us, we two being one, are it.
So to one neutral thing both sexes fit,
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.

John Donne
Since I am coming to that holy room,
Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made thy music; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think now before.

John Donne
I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements, and an angelic sprite.

John Donne
So, if I dream I have you, I have you,
For, all our joys are but fantastical.

John Donne
Sweetest love, I do not go,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;
But since that I
Must die at last, 'tis best,
To use my self in jest
Thus by feigned deaths to die.

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

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

John Donne
Variable, and therefore miserable condition of man; this minute I was well, and am ill, this minute.

John Donne
To see God only, I go out of sight:
And to 'scape stormy days, I choose
An everlasting night.

John Donne
Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.

John Donne
It is too little to call man a little world, except God, man is a diminutive to nothing. Man consists of more pieces, more parts, than the world; than the world doth, nay, than the world is.

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

John Donne
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes, upon one double string;
So to entergraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.

John Donne
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance, hath slain.

John Donne
Yet nothing can to nothing fall, Nor any place be empty quite; Therefore I think my breast hath all Those pieces still, though they be not unite; And now, as broken glasses show A hundred lesser faces, so My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore, But after one such love, can love no more.

John Donne
If poisonous minerals, and if that tree,
Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious
Cannot be damned; alas; why should I be?

John Donne
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I begun.

John Donne
At most, the greatest persons are but great wens, and excrescences; men of wit and delightful conversation, but as morals for ornament, except they be so incorporated into the body of the world that they contribute something to the sustentation of the whole.

John Donne
Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke.

John Donne
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.

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

John Donne
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest, Where can we find two better hemispheres Without sharp North, without declining West?

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

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

John Donne