John Donne Quotes (169 Quotes)

Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like a usurped town to another due, Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captived, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov-ed fain, But am betrothed unto your enemy Divorce me, untie or break that knot again Take me to you, imprison me, for I Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Pleasure is none, if not diversified.

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

Wilt thou love God, as he thee?

Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it.

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.

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

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.

Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing.

She is all states, and all princes, I, Nothing else is.

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.

A bracelet of bright hair about the bone.

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

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.

Yesternight the sun went hence, And yet is here today.

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

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

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

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

She is all States, and all Princes, I, Nothing else is. Princes do but play us.

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.

I shall not live till I see God and when I have seen Him, I shall never die.

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. Called by His Majestys household the Doctors Own Funeral Sermon.

She thinks someone listens in heaven.

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.

Changed loves are but changed sorts of meat, And when he hath the kernel eat, Who doth not fling away the shell.

I have done one braver thing Than all the Worthies did And yet a braver thence doth spring, Which is, to keep that hid.

When my grave is broke up again Some second guest to entertain.

Twice or thrice I loved thee Before I knew thy face or name So in a voice, so in shapeless flame, Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be.

But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space.

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.

But think that we Are but turned aside to sleep.

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

The Alphabet Of flowers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.

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.

When I must shipwrack, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotencie might have some excuse not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.

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.

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

Keep us, Lord, so awake in the duties of our callings that we may sleep in Thy peace and wake in Thy glory

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

And must she needs be false because she's fair.

Why do the prodigal elements supply
Life and food to me, being more pure than I,
Simple, and further from corruption?