John Donne Quotations | Page 2

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

Sleep is pain's easiest salve

We study health, and we deliberate upon our meats and drink and air and exercises, and we hew and we polish every stone that goes to that building; and so our health is a long and regular work. But in a minute a cannon batters all, overthrows all, demolishes all; a sickness unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiosity, nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroys us in an instant.

Who knows his virtues name or place, hath none.

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

Men are sponges, which, to pour out, receive; Who know false play, rather than lose, deceive. For in best understandings sin began, Angels sinn'd first, then devils, and then man. Only perchance beasts sin not ; wretched we Are beasts in all but white integrity.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, Angels affect us often.

My world's both parts, and 'o! Both parts must die.

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

The Psalms foretell what I, what any shall do and suffer and say.

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

My love though silly is more brave.

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

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

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.

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!

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

Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.

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

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

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

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

The whole life of Christ was a continual Passion; others die martyrs but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for to his tenderness then the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after, and the manger as uneasy at first as his cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of one and the same day. And as even his birth is his death, so every action and passage that manifests Christ to us is his birth, for Epiphany is manifestation.

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

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

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

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.

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

...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.

Then love is sin, and let me sinful be.

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.

Chastity is not chastity in an old man, but a disability to be unchaste.

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.

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

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

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

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.

I am a little world made cunningly.

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

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

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.

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.

Death is an ascension to a better library.

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

More than kisses, letters mingle souls.

we give each other a smile with a future in it

In heaven it is always autumn.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

And swear No where Lives a woman true, and fair.

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

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.

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 hash, nor yesterday, Running, it never runs from us away, But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

This Extasie doth unperplex (We said) and tell us what we love, Wee see by this, it was not sexe, Wee see, we saw not what did move: But as all severall soules contain Mixture of things, they know not what, Love, these mixt souls, doth mixe againe. Loves mysteries in soules doe grow, But yet the body is his booke.

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?

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.

Poor intricated soul! Riddling, perplexed, labyrinthical soul!

Who ever comes to shroud me, do not harm Nor question much That subtle wreath 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.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure, then from thee much more, must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

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.

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

Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it.

And dare love that, and say so too, And forget the He and She.

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.

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

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.

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?

We can die by it, if not live by love, And if unfit for tombs and hearse Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; And if no peace of chronicle we prove, We'll build in sonnet pretty rooms; As well a well wrought urne becomes The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs.

Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to 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.

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie Flat on this bed.

The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I Abjure my so much loved variety.

Thou art 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. Why swell'st thou then?

Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.