John Donne Quotes

205 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Donne
Without outward declarations, who can conclude an inward love?

John Donne
He that desires to print a book, should much more desire, to be a book.

John Donne
We thinke the heavens enjoy their Spherical, Their round proportion embracing all. But yet their various and perplexed course, Observ'd in divers ages doth enforce Men to finde out so many Eccentrique parts, Such divers downe-right lines, such overthwarts, As disproportion that pure forme. It teares The Firmament in eight and forty sneers.

John Donne
Whilst my Physitians by their love are growne Cosmographers, and I their Mapp, who lie Flat on this bed, that by them may be showne That this is my South-west discoverie per-fretum febris, by these streights to die.

John Donne
Man has weav'd out a net, and this net throwne Upon the Heavens, and now they are his owne.

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

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

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

John Donne