John Donne Quotes

Young men mend not their sight by using old men's spectacles.

Without outward declarations, who can conclude an inward love?

Keep us, Lord, so awake in the duties of our calling that we may sleep in thy peace and wake in thy glory.

Festive alcohol sometimes leads to an excess of honesty.

Friends are ourselves.

Our critical day is not the very day of our death; but the whole course of our life.

Nature hath no goal though she hath law.

I sing the progress of a deathless soul.

God is so omnipresent. . . . God is an angel in an angel, and a stone in a stone, and a straw in a straw.

It is too little to call man a little world; Except God, man is a diminutive to nothing.

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

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

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

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.

Sleep is pain's easiest salve

The day breaks not, it is my heart.

To know and feel all this and not have the words to express it makes a human a grave of his own thoughts.

As God loves a cheerful giver, so he also loves a cheerful taker. Who takes hold of his gifts with a glad heart.

The rich have no more of the kingdom of heaven than they have purchased of the poor by their alms.

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

The distance from nothing to a little, is ten thousand times more, than from it to the highest degree in this life.

. . . Change is the nursery Of musicke, joy, life and eternity.

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

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

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.

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

Doth not a man die even in his birth? The breaking of prison is death, and what is our birth, but a breaking of prison?

Women are like the arts, forced unto none, Open to all searchers, unprized, if unknown.

He that desires to print a book, should much more desire, to be a book.

All other things to their destruction draw, Only our love hath no decay.

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

Of all the commentaries on the Scriptures, good examples are the best.

Lust-bred diseases rot thee.

Between cowardice and despair, valour is gendred.

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

If I lose at play, I blaspheme; if my fellow loses, he blasphemes. So, God is always the loser.

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.

Send home my long strayed eyes to me, Which (Oh) too long have dwelt on thee.

Old grandsires talk of yesterday with sorrow, And for our children we reserve tomorrow.

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.

Christ beats his drum, but he does not press men; Christ is served with voluntaries.

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

Who knows his virtues name or place, hath none.

I find no abhorring in my appetite.

To an incompetent judge I must not lie, but I may be silent; to a competent I must answer.

Kind pity chokes my spleen.

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

Death, thou shalt die.

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

Our faults are not seen, But past us; neither felt, but only in The punishment.