John Donne - Souls Quotes

27 Sourced Quotes

View all John Donne Quotes

That soul that can reflect upon itself, consider itself, is more than so.

John Donne

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

John Donne

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

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

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

John Donne

Licence my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O, my America, my Newfoundland
My kingdom, safest when with one man mann'd,
My mine of precious stones, my empery;
How am I blest in thus discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free ;
Then, where my hand is set, my soul shall be.

John Donne

Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right, By these we reach divinity

John Donne

Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls;
For, thus friends absent speak.

John Donne

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

John Donne

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two,
Thy soul the fixt foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.

John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away, and whisper to their souls to go, whilst some of their sad friends do say, the breath goes now, and some say no.

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

True joy is the earnest which we have of heaven, it is the treasure of the soul, and therefore should be laid in a safe place, and nothing in this world is safe to place it in.

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

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

Poor intricated soul! Riddling, perplexed, labyrinthical soul!

John Donne

Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be,
To taste whole joys.

John Donne

Who ever comes to shroud me, do not harm
Nor question much
That subtle wreth of hair, which crowns my arm;
The mystery, the sign you must not touch,
For 'tis my outward soul,
Viceroy to that, which then to heaven being gone,
Will leave this to control,
And keep these limbs, her provinces, from dissolution.

John Donne

So, of a lone unhaunted place possessed,
Did this soul's second inn, built by the guest,
This living buried man, this quiet mandrake, rest.

John Donne

That subtle knot which makes us man:
So must pure lovers' souls descend
T' affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great Prince in prison lies.

John Donne

At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go.

John Donne

We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are compos'd and made,
For th' atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
But oh alas, so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They'are ours, though they'are not we; we are
The intelligences, they the spheres.

John Donne

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure, then from thee much more, must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

John Donne

Our two souls therefore which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

John Donne

A bride, before a "Good-night" could be said, Should vanish from her clothes into her bed, As souls from bodies steal, and are not spied. But now she's laid; what though she be? Yet there are more delays, for where is he? He comes and passeth through sphere after sphere; First her sheets, then her arms, then anywhere. Let not this day, then, but this night be thine; Thy day was but the eve to this, O Valentine.

John Donne

So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss,
Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away.

John Donne

And now good morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room, an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is
one.

John Donne