Quotes by Donne, John

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

Donne, John on doctors   

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

Donne, John on doubt
3 fans of this quote   

"Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet."

Donne, John on evil   

"As he that fears God hears nothing else, so, he that sees God sees every thing else."

Donne, John on faith
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"Reason is our soul's left hand, faith her right, by these we reach divinity."

Donne, John on faith   

"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."

Donne, John on farewells   

"At most, the greatest persons are but great wens, and excrescences; men of wit and delightful conversation, but as morals for ornament, except they be so incorporated into the body of the world that they contribute something to the sustentation of the whole."

Donne, John on greatness   

"Man is not only a contributory creature, but a total creature; he does not only make one, but he is all; he is not a piece of the world, but the world itself; and next to the glory of God, the reason why there is a world."

Donne, John on humankind   

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

Donne, John on infatuation
9 fans of this quote   

"More than kisses letters mingle souls."

Donne, John on letters   

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

Donne, John on letters   

"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."

Donne, John on anniversaries   

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

Donne, John on love   

"Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies."

Donne, John on love
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"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."

Donne, John on love
3 fans of this quote   

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

Donne, John on love   

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

Donne, John on nudity   

"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."

Donne, John on philosophers and philosophy   

"Pleasure is none, if not diversified."

Donne, John on pleasure   

"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."

Donne, John on atheism   

"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."

Donne, John on prayer   

"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."

Donne, John on prison   

"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."

Donne, John on quarrels   

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

Donne, John on rejection   

"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."

Donne, John on science   

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

Donne, John on self-sabotage   

"Be your own palace, or the world is your jail."

Donne, John on self-sufficiency
3 fans of this quote   

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

Donne, John on suffering   

"Whenever any affliction assails me, I have the keys of my prison in mine own hand, and no remedy presents it selfe so soone to my heart, as mine own sword. Often meditation of this hath wonne me to a charitable interpretation of their action, who dy so: and provoked me a little to watch and exagitate their reasons, which pronounce so peremptory judgments upon them."

Donne, John on suicide   

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

Donne, John on translation   

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

Donne, John on cooperation
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"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."

Donne, John on death
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"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."

Donne, John on death   

"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."

Donne, John on death   

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

Donne, John on death
5 fans of this quote   

"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 friends or of thine own were: any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. "

Donne, John on uncategorised
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