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John Donne Quotes
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Who vagrant transitory comets sees, Wonders because they're rare; but a new star Whose motion with the firmament agrees, Is miracle; for there no new things are.
John Donne
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Sleep with clean hands, either kept clean all day by integrity or washed clean at night by repentance.
John Donne
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Young men mend not their sight by using old men's spectacles.
John Donne
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Know'st thou but how the stone doth enter in The bladder's cave, and never break the skin?
John Donne
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I shall not live 'till I see God; and when I have seen Him, I shall never die.
John Donne
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Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes.
John Donne
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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
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Love is a growing, or full constant light; And his first minute, after noon, is night.
John Donne
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Religion is not a melancholy, the spirit of God is not a damper.
John Donne
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To an incompetent judge I must not lie, but I may be silent; to a competent I must answer.
John Donne
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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In best understandings, sin began, Angels sinned first, then Devils, and then Man.
John Donne
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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
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And in these Constellations then arise New Starres, and old doe vanish from our eyes.
John Donne
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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
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Our faults are not seen, But past us; neither felt, but only in The punishment.
John Donne
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Verse hath a middle nature: heaven keeps souls, The grave keeps bodies, verse the fame enrols.
John Donne
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Without outward declarations, who can conclude an inward love?
John Donne
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He that desires to print a book, should much more desire, to be a book.
John Donne
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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
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Quote of the day
No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
Carrie Chapman Catt
John Donne
Creative Commons
Born:
January 22, 1572
Died:
March 31, 1631
(aged 59)
Bio:
John Donne was an English poet and a cleric in the Church of England. He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets.
Known for:
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
Holy Sonnets
The Good-Morrow
Death Be Not Proud
The Canonization
Most used words:
love
god
man
souls
death
sun
day
die
rest
fear
afraid
place
sleep
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John Donne on Wikipedia
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John Donne works on Wikisource
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