John Donne - Love Quotes

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Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.

John Donne
I do not love a man, except I hate his vices, because those vices are the enemies, and the destruction of that friend whom I love.

John Donne
How great love is, presence best trial makes, But absence tries how long this love will be.

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

John Donne
Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and their map, who lie
Flat on this bed.

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

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
All Kings, and all their favorites,
All glory of honors, beauties, wits
The sun itself, which makes times, as they pass,
Is elder by a year, now, than it was
When thou and I first one another saw:
All other things, to their destruction draw,
Only our love hath no decay;
This, no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday,
Running, it never runs from us away,
But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

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

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

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

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
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
For I am every dead thing,
In whom love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness
He ruined me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not.

John Donne
This Extasie doth unperplex (We said) and tell us what we love, Wee see by this, it was not sexe, Wee see, we saw not what did move: But as all severall soules contain Mixture of things, they know not what, Love, these mixt souls, doth mixe againe. Loves mysteries in soules doe grow, But yet the body is his booke.

John Donne
The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts
Not of two lovers, but two loves the nests.

John Donne
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks.

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

John Donne
This love of place and precedency rocks us in our cradles, it lies down with us in our graves.

John Donne
Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love.

John Donne
Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's will ever be.

John Donne
But he who loveliness within
Hath found, all outward loathes,
For he who color loves, and skin,
Loves but their oldest clothes.

John Donne
Filled with her love, may I be rather grown Mad with much heart, then idiot with none.

John Donne
'Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be?
O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise, because 'tis light?
Did we lie down, because 'twas night?
Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither
Should in despite of light keep us together.

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
Dear love, for nothing less than thee
Would I have broke this happy dream,
It was a theme
For reason, much too strong for fantasy.

John Donne
And dare love that, and say so too,
And forget the He and She.

John Donne