Quotes by John Donne
For, thus friends absent speak.
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.
Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven.
As states subsist in part by keeping their weaknesses from being known, so is it the quiet of families to have their chancery and their parliament within doors, and to compose and determine all emergent differences there.
Busy old fool, unruly Sun, why dost thou thus through windows and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.
Art is the most passionate orgy within man's grasp.
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.
Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.
O, if thou car'st not whom I love alas, thou lov'st not me.
Monogamy and prostitution go together.
One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die!
Where can we find two better hemispheres/ Without sharp North, without declining West?
A bracelet of bright hair about the bone, Will he not let us alone,...
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.
Twice or thrice had I loved thee, Before I knew thy face or name.
When my grave is broke up again / Some second guest to entertain.
Sweare by thy selfe, that at my death thy Sonne Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;...
Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally ;If our two loves be one, or thou and I Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.
So all were lost, which in the ship were found, They in the sea being burnt, they in the burnt ship drown'd.
Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay? Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;...
I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him meerly seise me, and onely declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome ...
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.
To be no part of any body, is to be nothing.
