John Donne - God Quotes

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My God, my God, thou art a direct God, may I not say a literal God, a God that wouldst be understood literally and according to the plain sense of all that thou sayest? But thou art also…a figurative, a metaphorical God too.

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

John Donne
I shall not live 'till I see God; and when I have seen Him, I shall never die.

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

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

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

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
From this I testify her holy cheerfulness, and religious alacrity, (one of the best evidences of a good conscience), that as she came to this place, God's house of Prayer…she ever hastened her family, and her company hither, with that cheerful provocation, For God's sake let's go, For God's sake let's be there at the Confession.

John Donne
Now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.

John Donne
Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification; and as without this, without holiness, no man shall see God, though he pore whole nights upon his Bible; so without that, without humility, no man shall hear God speak to his soul, though he hear three two-hour sermons every day.

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

John Donne
He must pull out his own eyes, and see no creature, before he can say, he sees no God; He must be no man, and quench his reasonable soul, before he can say to himself, there is no God.

John Donne
When God's hand is bent to strike, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God; but to fall out of the hands of the living God is a horror beyond our expression, beyond our imagination.

John Donne
Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend.

John Donne
I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in and invite God and his angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.

John Donne
I long to talk with some old lover's ghost,
Who died before the god of love was born.

John Donne
For God sake hold your tongue, and let me love.

John Donne
What gnashing is not a comfort, what gnawing of the worm is not a tickling, what torment is not a marriage bed to this damnation, to be secluded eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight of God?

John Donne
God himself took a day to rest in, and a good man's grave is his Sabbath.

John Donne