John Donne (1572–1631) was an English poet, prose writer, and clergyman. His metaphysical poetry is among the most significant works in English literature.
Donne was not a professional poet at any point in his career. He published little of his work, sharing it instead among his friends and with people who cared about his advancement.
Donne is noted for his Satires (c.1590–99,) Elegies (c.1590–99,) and for his love poems, which appeared in the collection Songs and Sonnets. These are considered some of the finest collections of love lyrics in English literature.
Donne’s later works, such as An Anatomy of the World (1611) and Of the Progress of the Soul (1612) became more philosophical. His Holy Sonnets (1633) represents some of the greatest spiritual poems ever written. He wrote both the famous “Hymn to God the Father” and his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624) during a severe illness in 1623.
Donne’s rejection of Catholicism and conversion to Anglicanism is evident in the prose-work Pseudo-Martyr (1610.) He was ordained in 1615 and became Dean (1621) of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, where he became famous for his sermons.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by John Donne
Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven.
—John Donne
Topics: Doubt, Despair, Serenity
Never start with tomorrow to reach eternity. Eternity is not being reached by small steps.
—John Donne
Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.
—John Donne
Topics: Suffering
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.
—John Donne
Topics: Sin
Who are a little wise the best fools be.
—John Donne
No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.
—John Donne
Topics: Autumn, Spring, Seasons
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.
—John Donne
Topics: Dying, Exercise, Death
Full nakedness! All my joys are due to thee, as souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, to taste whole joys.
—John Donne
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.
—John Donne
Topics: Greatness & Great Things, Greatness
There is nothing that God hath established in a constant course of nature, and which therefore is done every day, but would seem a Miracle, and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once.
—John Donne
Topics: Miracles, Wonder
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.
—John Donne
Topics: Humankind, Humanity
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.
—John Donne
Topics: Science, Scientists
Busy old fool, unruly Sun, why dost thou thus through windows and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?
—John Donne
Topics: Lovers, Love
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.
—John Donne
Topics: Prison
Sleep is pain’s easiest salve, and doth fulfill all the offices of death, except to kill
—John Donne
Topics: Sleep
Nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant;
the only harmless great thing.
—John Donne
Topics: Greatness & Great Things
Between cowardice and despair, valour is gendered.
—John Donne
Topics: Courage, Cowardice
I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease.
—John Donne
Topics: Medicine, Doctors
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.
—John Donne
Topics: Suicide
But I do nothing upon myself, and yet I am my own executioner.
—John Donne
Topics: Mistakes
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.
—John Donne
Topics: Death, Dying
Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.
—John Donne
Topics: Self-reliance
Reason is our soul’s left hand, faith her right;
By these we reach divinity, that’s you;
Their loves, who have the blessing of your light,
Grew from their reason ; mine from fair faith grew.
—John Donne
Topics: Belief, One liners, Faith, Reason
As soon as there was two there was pride
—John Donne
Topics: Pride
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.
—John Donne
Topics: Remembrance
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.
—John Donne
Topics: Love
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.
—John Donne
Topics: Death, Dying
Take me to you, imprison me, for I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free, nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
—John Donne
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
—John Donne
Topics: Beauty, Love
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.
—John Donne
Topics: Atheism
God himself took a day to rest in, and a good man’s grave is his Sabbath.
—John Donne
Topics: Death
Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls. For, thus friends absent speak.
—John Donne
Topics: Letters
There is hook in every benefit, that sticks in his jaws that takes that benefit, and draws him whither the benefactor will.
—John Donne
Topics: Opportunities
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.
—John Donne
Topics: Wit, Philosophers, Philosophy
All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated…As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness….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 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 bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
—John Donne
Topics: Friend, Help, Teamwork, Death, Cooperation, Dying, Humanity, Kind
More than kisses, letters mingle souls.
—John Donne
Topics: Romance, Letters
One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more.
—John Donne
Topics: Immortality
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.
—John Donne
Topics: Quarrels, Fighting, Fight
Keep us, Lord, so awake in the duties of our calling that we may sleep in thy peace and wake in thy glory.
—John Donne
Topics: Prayer
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.
—John Donne
Topics: Prayer
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
John Keats English Poet
Enoch Powell British Politician
George Herbert Welsh Anglican Poet
John Webster English Dramatist
George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) English Novelist
John Milton English Poet
Edmund Spenser English Poet
Christina Rossetti English Poet
William Shakespeare British Playwright
Charles Lamb British Essayist, Poet