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John Donne (Writer)

I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I Did, till we loved? were we not weaned till then? But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den? 'Twas so; but this all pleasures fancies be; If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desir'd, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.
— John Donne love
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 love
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest, Where can we find two better hemispheres Without sharp North, without declining West? What ever dies, was not mixed equally; If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
— John Donne love
Though Truth and Falsehood be Near twins, yet Truth a little elder is.
— John Donne win
Go and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me where all past years are, Or who cleft the Devil's foot, Teach me to hear mermaids singing, Or to keep off envy's stinging, And find What wind Serves to advance an honest mind.
— John Donne mind
And swear No where Lives a woman true and fair. If thou find'st one, let me know, Such a pilgrimage were sweet; Yet do not, I would not go, Though at next door we might meet, Though she were true, when you met her, And last, till you write your letter, Yet she Will be False, ere I come, to two, or three.
— John Donne man
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 brave
But he who loveliness within Hath found, all outward loathes, For he who color loves, and skin, Loves but their oldest clothes.
— John Donne love
And dare love that, and say so too, And forget the He and She.
— John Donne love
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
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
— John Donne time
She is all states, and all princes, I, Nothing else is.
— John Donne
For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love.
— John Donne love
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 love
As well a well-wrought urn becomes The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs.
— John Donne great
I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so In whining poetry.
— John Donne poetry
Who are a little wise, the best fools be.
— John Donne wise
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 feigned deaths to die.
— John Donne love
Yesternight the sun went hence, And yet is here today.
— John Donne night
But think that we Are but turned aside to sleep.
— John Donne sleep
When I died last, and dear, I die As often as from thee I go.
— John Donne die
Oh do not die, for I shall hate All women so, when thou art gone.
— John Donne women
Twice and thrice had I loved thee, Before I knew thy face or name.
— John Donne love
'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 light
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 love
Let us love nobly, and live, and add again Years and years unto years, till we attain To write threescore: this is the second of our reign.
— John Donne love
Send home my long strayed eyes to me, Which (Oh) too long have dwelt on thee.
— John Donne home
The world's whole sap is sunk: The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk, Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk, Dead and interred; yet all these seem to laugh, Compared with me, who am their epitaph.
— John Donne life
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 love
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
Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it.
— John Donne love
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 soul
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 soul
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread Our eyes, upon one double string; So to entergraft our hands, as yet Was all the means to make us one, And pictures in our eyes to get Was all our propagation.
— John Donne eyes
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 love
Love's mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book.
— John Donne soul
I long to talk with some old lover's ghost, Who died before the god of love was born.
— John Donne love
To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend, All is the purlieu of the god of love.
— John Donne love
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 war
A bracelet of bright hair about the bone.
— John Donne race
Take heed of loving me.
— John Donne loving
So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss, Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away.
— John Donne soul
Ah cannot we As well as cocks and lions jocund be, After such pleasures?
— John Donne pleasure
Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls; For, thus friends absent speak.
— John Donne soul
And new philosophy calls all in doubt, The element of fire is quite put out; The sun is lost, and the earth, and no man's wit, Can well direct him where to look for it. And freely men confess that this world's spent, When in the planets, and the firmament They seek so many new; then see that this Is crumbled out again to his atomies. 'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone; All just supply, and all relation: Prince, subject, Father, Son, are things forgot.
— John Donne philosophy
We understood Her by her sight; her pure, and eloquent blood Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, That one might almost say, her body thought.
— John Donne thought
Since I am coming to that holy room, Where, with thy choir of saints forevermore, I shall be made thy music; as I come I tune the instrument here at the door, And what I must do then, think here before.
— John Donne music
Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and their map, who lie Flat on this bed.
— John Donne love
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.
— John Donne men
Absence, hear thou my protestation Against thy strength, Distance, and length; Do what thou canst for alteration
— John Donne strength
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
— John Donne beauty
Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love.
— John Donne love
She, and comparisons are odious.
— John Donne paris
No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace, As I have seen in one autumnal face.
— John Donne beauty
The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I Abjure my so much loved variety.
— John Donne love
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 love
The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts Not of two lovers, but two loves the nests.
— John Donne love
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
— John Donne right
O my America! my new-found land.
— John Donne america
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee, As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, To taste whole joys.
— John Donne soul
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 soul
I am a little world made cunningly Of elements, and an angelic sprite.
— John Donne men
At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise From death, you numberless infinities Of souls, and to your scattred bodies go.
— John Donne death
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, Despair, law, chance, hath slain.
— John Donne war
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?
— John Donne death
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
Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell; And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke.
— John Donne war
One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
— John Donne death
What if this present were the world's last night?
— John Donne world
Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend.
— John Donne art
Show me, dear Christ, Thy spouse, so bright and clear.
— John Donne right
Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing.
— John Donne great
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.
— John Donne self
No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.
— John Donne beauty
When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.
— John Donne language
I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so in whining poetry.
— John Donne poetry
More than kisses, letters mingle souls.
— John Donne soul
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 soul
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
God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice.
— John Donne war
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
— John Donne time
Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.
— John Donne world
Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.
— John Donne cat
Art is the most passionate orgy within man's grasp.
— John Donne passion
Reason is our soul's left hand, faith her right.
— John Donne faith
Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.
— John Donne man
Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.
— 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 soul
Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven.
— John Donne joy
For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love.
— John Donne love
Since you would save none of me, I bury some of you.
— John Donne you
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
But I do nothing upon myself, and yet I am my own executioner.
— John Donne self
The day breaks not, it is my heart.
— John Donne art
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
Natures great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing.
— John Donne great

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101sharequotes Quotes Topics Famous Occupations Motivation Inspirational Life Love Funny Success Friendship