John Donne famous quotes

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.
-- John Donne

#Beauty #Summer #Spring

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.
-- John Donne

#Teamwork #Men #Islands

When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.
-- John Donne

#Death #Book #Men

More than kisses, letters mingle souls.
-- John Donne

#Love #Romantic #Kissing

In heaven it is always autumn.
-- John Donne

#Autumn #Heaven

Death is an ascension to a better library.
-- John Donne

#Library #Ascension

I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so.
-- John Donne

#Love #Two #Fool

I am a little world made cunningly.
-- John Donne

#World #Littles #Made

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
-- John Donne

#Death #Peace #Men

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

#Love #Hate #Men

Sleep with clean hands, either kept clean all day by integrity or washed clean at night by repentance.
-- John Donne

#Integrity #Sleep #Night

Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing.
-- John Donne

#Elephants #Masterpiece #Great Things

Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so. For, those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow. Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
-- John Donne

#Death #Art #Thinking

Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
-- John Donne

#Love #Time #Rags

we give each other a smile with a future in it
-- John Donne

#Giving

Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven.
-- John Donne

#Joy #Serenity #Heaven

ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee
-- John Donne

#Tolls #Bells #Thee

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

#God #Faith #Christianity

For love all love of other sights controls and makes one little room an everywhere
-- John Donne

#Philosophy #Educational #Sight

Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.
-- John Donne

#Wicked

The sun must not set upon anger, much less will I let the sun set upon the anger of God towards me.
-- John Donne

#Christian #Anger #Sun

...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

#Love Is #Two

Death, thou shalt die.
-- John Donne

Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
-- John Donne

#Heart #Blow #Shining

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

#God #Angel #Doors

Then love is sin, and let me sinful be.
-- John Donne

#Love Is #Sin #Let Me

To be no part of any body, is to be nothing.
-- John Donne

#Rejection #Body

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

#War #Justice #Age

Busy old fool, unruly Sun, why dost thou thus through windows and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?
-- John Donne

#Love #Running #Fool

Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
-- John Donne

#Love #Beauty #Sarcastic

And what is so intricate, so entangling as death? Who ever got out of a winding sheet?
-- John Donne

#Death #Sheets

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

#Political #Equal

Art is the most passionate orgy within man's grasp.
-- John Donne

#Art #Men #Passionate

O Lord, never suffer us to think that we can stand by ourselves, and not need thee.
-- John Donne

#Thinking #Suffering #Needs

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
-- John Donne

#Inspirational #Friendship #Death

All occasions invite His mercies, and all times are His seasons.
-- John Donne

#Mercy #All Time #All Occasions

Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
-- John Donne

#Kill Me

Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.
-- John Donne

#Motivational #Jail #World

At the round earth's imagined corners, blow your trumpets, angels.
-- John Donne

#Angel #Blow #Earth

Doubt wisely; in strange way To stand inquiring right, is not to stray; To sleep, or run wrong, is.
-- John Donne

#Running #Sleep #Doubt

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we lov'd?
-- John Donne

#Love #Wonder

I have done one braver thing than all the Worthies did, and yet a braver thence doth spring, which is, to keep that hid.
-- John Donne

#Spring #Bravery #Done

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

#Exercise #Miracle #Done

I count all that part of my life lost which I spent not in communion with God, or in doing good.
-- John Donne

#Doing Good #Lost #Communion

Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me, why plowing, building, ruling and the rest, or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest, by cursed Cain's race invented be, and blest Seth vexed us with Astronomy.
-- John Donne

#Art #Race #Plowing

I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call and invite God and his angels thither...
-- John Donne

#Angel

When I died last, and, Dear, I die As often as from thee I go Though it be but an hour ago, And lovers' hours be full eternity.
-- John Donne

#Retirement #Farewell #Lasts

Love was as subtly caught, as a disease; But being got it is a treasure sweet, which to defend is harder than to get: And ought not be profaned on either part, for though 'Tis got by chance, 'Tis kept by art.
-- John Donne

#Love #Sweet #Art

A mathematical point is the most indivisble and unique thing which art can present.
-- John Donne

#Art #Unique #Mathematics

On a huge hill, Cragged, and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will Reach her, about must, and about must goo.
-- John Donne

#Truth #Hills

If I dream I have you, I have you, for all our joys are but fantastical.
-- John Donne

#Dream #Joy

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

#Fear #Sea #Other Worlds

All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, Despair, law, chance, hath slain.
-- John Donne

#War #Law #Soul

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

#Kissing #Two #Soul

One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
-- John Donne

#Sleep #Past

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

#Lying #Men #Soul

There is hook in every benefit, that sticks in his jaws that takes that benefit, and draws him whither the benefactor will.
-- John Donne

#Hook #Benefits #Sticks

O how feeble is man's power, that if good fortune fall, cannot add another hour, nor a lost hour recall!
-- John Donne

#Fall #Power #Men

Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfill all the offices of death, except to kill
-- John Donne

#Pain #Sleep #Office

Men perish with whispering sins-nay, with silent sins, sins that never tell the conscience that they are sins, as often with crying sins; and in hell there shall meet as many men that never thought what was sin, as that spent all their thoughts in the compassing of sin.
-- John Donne

#Men #Whispering #Cry

Commemoration of Richard Meux Benson, Founder of the Society of St John the Evangelist, 1915 Our critical day is not the very day of our death, but the whole course of our life; I thank him, that prays for me when my bell tolls; but I thank him much more, that catechizes me, or preaches to me, or instructs me how to live.
-- John Donne

#Life #Tolls #Bells

Commemoration of John Donne, Priest, Poet, 1631 He was the Word that spake it; He took the bread and brake it; And what that Word did make it I do believe, and take it.
-- John Donne

#Believe #Bread #Poet

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

#Humility #Night #Men

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

#Joy #Heaven #Soul

Commemoration of Pandita Mary Ramabai, Translator of the Scriptures, 1922 A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a fear of tomorrow's dangers, a straw under my knees, a noise in my ear, a light in my eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayers.
-- John Donne

#Prayer #Memories #Eye

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

#Men #Soul #Virtuous

All mankind is one volume. When one man dies, a chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language. And every chapter must be translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice. But God's hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall live open to one another
-- John Donne

#Life #War #Book

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

#Heart #Mad #May

I will not look upon the quickening sun, But straight her beauty to my sense shall run; The air shall note her soft, the fire most pure; Water suggest her clear, and the earth sure; Time shall not lose our passages.
-- John Donne

#Running #Time #Fire

If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.
-- John Donne

#Dream #Thee

Here lies a she sun, and a he moon there; She gives the best light to his sphere; Or each is both, and all, and so They unto one another nothing owe; And yet they do, but are So just and rich in that coin which they pay, That neither would, nor needs forbear, nor stay; Neither desires to be spared nor to spare. They quickly pay their debt, and then Take no acquittances, but pay again; They pay, they give, they lend, and so let fall No such occasion to be liberal. More truth, more courage in these two do shine, Than all thy turtles have and sparrows, Valentine.
-- John Donne

#Lying #Fall #Valentine

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

#Good Night #Valentine #Clothes

Up then, fair phoenix bride, frustrate the sun; Thyself from thine affection Takest warmth enough, and from thine eye All lesser birds will take their jollity. Up, up, fair bride, and call Thy stars from out their several boxes, take Thy rubies, pearls, and diamonds forth, and make Thyself a constellation of them all; And by their blazing signify That a great princess falls, but doth not die. Be thou a new star, that to us portends Ends of much wonder; and be thou those ends.
-- John Donne

#Stars #Princess #Fall

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

#Soul