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
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: Reason, Belief, Faith, One liners
For some not to be martyred is a martyrdom.
—John Donne
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: Wonder, Miracles
Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls. For, thus friends absent speak.
—John Donne
Topics: Letters
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
As soon as there was two there was pride
—John Donne
Topics: Pride
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
—John Donne
Topics: Beauty, Love
As he that fears God hears nothing else, so, he that sees God sees every thing else.
—John Donne
Topics: Faith
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
God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice.
—John Donne
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
Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven.
—John Donne
Topics: Despair, Serenity, Doubt
Be your own palace, or the world is your jail.
—John Donne
Topics: Independence
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: Dying, Death
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
More than kisses, letters mingle souls.
—John Donne
Topics: Letters, Romance
Never start with tomorrow to reach eternity. Eternity is not being reached by small steps.
—John Donne
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
Sleep is pain’s easiest salve, and doth fulfill all the offices of death, except to kill
—John Donne
Topics: Sleep
To be no part of any body, is to be nothing.
—John Donne
Topics: The Body
Who are a little wise the best fools be.
—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, Greatness & Great Things
Full nakedness! All my joys are due to thee, as souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, to taste whole joys.
—John Donne
I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease.
—John Donne
Topics: Medicine, Doctors
I count all that part of my life lost which I spent not in communion with God, or in doing good.
—John Donne
Topics: Life
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
One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more.
—John Donne
Topics: Immortality
God himself took a day to rest in, and a good man’s grave is his Sabbath.
—John Donne
Topics: Death
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
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