John Donne quotes:

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

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

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

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.

ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee

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

Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.

And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, the element of fire is quite put out; the Sun is lost, and the earth, and no mans wit can well direct him where to look for it.

The day breaks not, it is my heart.

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.

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

For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love.

As states subsist in part by keeping their weaknesses from being known, so is it the quiet of families to have their chancery and their parliament within doors, and to compose and determine all emergent differences there.

Reason is our soul's left hand, faith her right.

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.

Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Take me to you, imprison me, for I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free, nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Contemplative and bookish men must of necessity be more quarrelsome than others, because they contend not about matter of fact, nor can determine their controversies by any certain witnesses, nor judges. But as long as they go towards peace, that is Truth, it is no matter which way.

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

When my mouth shall be filled with dust, and the worm shall feed, and feed sweetly upon me, when the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction if the poorest alive tread upon him, nor the poorest receive any contentment in being made equal to princes, for they shall be equal but in dust.

Death is an ascension to a better library.

To roam Giddily, and be everywhere but at home, Such freedom doth a banishment become.

That which attempts to elevate the ugly to the level of beauty becomes neither; but an obscenity.

I shall die reading; since my book and a grave are so near.

This is joy's bonfire, then, where love's strong artsMake of so noble individual partsOne fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts.

Doubt wisely; in strange wayTo stand inquiring right, is not to stray;To sleep, or run wrong, is.

Poetry is a counterfeit creation, and makes things that are not, as though they were

Busy old fool, unruly sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains, call on us? Must to thy motions lovers'seasons run? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide Late schoolboys, and sour prentices, Go tell court-huntsmen that the King will ride, Call countryants to harvest offices; Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

To a large degree, since the beginning of time, charisma or the lack of it has impacted upon those in quest of acclaim. As media expands, this has become ever more vital. Thus, demeanor if unappealing, can defeat one's likelihood of success, causing the death of prospects whilst they are still embryonic.

I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease.

As peace is of all goodness, so war is an emblem, a hieroglyphic, of all misery.

But I do nothing upon myself, and yet I am my own executioner.

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

The flea, though he kill none, he does all the harm he can.

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.

Good is not good, unless A thousand it possess, But doth waste with greediness.

Sweetest love, I do not go, For weariness of thee, Nor in hope the world can show A fitter love for me; But since that I Must die at last, 'tis best, To use my self in jest Thus by feign'd deaths to die.

What if this present were the world's last night?

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

More than kisses, letters mingle souls.

All our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death.

Love is strong as death; but nothing else is as strong as either; and both, love and death, met in Christ. How strong and powerful upon you, then, should that instruction be, that comes to you from both these, the love and death of Jesus Christ!

How many times go we to comedies, to masques, to places of great and noble resort, nay even to church only to see the company.

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

Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it and made fit for God.

If poisonous minerals, and if that tree, Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us, If lecherous goats, if serpents envious Cannot be damned; alas; why should I be?

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

We are all conceived in close prison; in our mothers wombs, we are close prisoners all; when we are born, we are born but to the liberty of the house; prisoners still, though within larger walls; and then all our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death.

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.

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

Licence my roving hands, and let them go Before, behind, between, above, below.

O! I shall soon despair, when I shall seeThat Thou lovest mankind well, yet wilt not choose me,And Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me.

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

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,Nor any place be empty quite;Therefore I think my breast hath allThose pieces still, though they be not unite;And now, as broken glasses showA hundred lesser faces, soMy rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,But after one such love, can love no more.

In Heaven, it is always Autumn".

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face."[The Autumnal]

Nature hath no goal, though she hath law.

Since you would save none of me, I bury some of you.

And to 'scape stormy days, I choose an everlasting night.

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

I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him merely seize me, and only declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwreck, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotency might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.

Can there be worse sickness, than to know that we are never well, nor can be so?

Kind pity chokes my spleen.

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

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.

Twice or thrice had I loved thee before I knew thy face or name, so in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, angels affect us oft, and worshiped be.

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?

Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.

At the round earth's imagined corners, blow Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise From death, you numberless infinities Of souls **** All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, Despair, law, chance, hath slain.

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

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

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.

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.

Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.

Pleasure is none, if not diversified.

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

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.

we give each other a smile with a future in it

In heaven it is always autumn.

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

Nothing but man of all envenomed things, doth work upon itself, with inborn stings.

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

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.

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.

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

Enjoyment always has a spoiling, otherwise it cannot be so.

We love and understand talent; we wish it be within us. The truly gifted, those exceptional few, must wait for the world to catch up.

...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.

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

Then love is sin, and let me sinful be.

A man that is not afraid of a Lion is afraid of a Cat .

I am a little world made cunningly.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

God made sun and moon to distinguish the seasons, and day and night; and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons. But God hath made no decrees to distinguish the seasons of His mercies. In Paradise the fruits were ripe the first minute, and in heaven it is always autumn. His mercies are ever in their maturity.

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

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

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.

Who are a little wise the best fools be.

Whoever 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.

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.

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

The world is a great volume, and man the index of that book; even in the body of man, you may turn to the whole world.

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

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

Goe and catche a falling starre, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me, where all past yeares are, Or who cleft the Divel's foot. Teach me to hear Mermaides' singing, Or to keep of envies stinging, And finde What winde Serves to advance an honest minde.