John Donne Quotes on Love (24 Quotes)

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.

Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.

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

Alas, alas, who's injur'd by my love?

Though hope bred faith and love: thus taught, I shall,
As nations do from Rome, from thy love fall.

To All, which all love, I say no.

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.

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.

Love is agrowing, to full constant light and his first minute, after noon, is night.

If that be simply perfectest
Which can by no way be exprest
But Negatives, my love is so.

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

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.

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.

Remember since all thy words used to be
To every suitor, Ay, if my friends agree;
Since, household charms, thy husband's name to teach,
Were all the love tricks that thy wit could reach;
And since, an hour's discourse could scarce have made
One answer in thee, and that ill arrayed
In broken proverbs and torn sentences.

My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore, but after one such love can love no more.

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.

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.

All love is wonder; if we justly do
Account her wonderful, why not lovely too?

Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies;
Choose this face, changed by no deformities.

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.

Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love.

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.

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