Inspirational Quotes by John Donne (English Poet, Cleric)

Inspirational Quotations by John Donne (English Poet, Cleric)

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

Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
—John Donne
Topics: Love

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

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: One liners, Reason, Belief, Faith

Nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant;
the only harmless great thing.
—John Donne
Topics: Greatness & Great Things

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: Fighting, Quarrels, Fight

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

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

As soon as there was two there was pride
—John Donne
Topics: Pride

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

Be your own palace, or the world is your jail.
—John Donne
Topics: Independence

Chastity is not chastity in an old man, but a disability to be unchaste.
—John Donne
Topics: Disability

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

Who are a little wise the best fools be.
—John Donne

More than kisses, letters mingle souls.
—John Donne
Topics: Letters, Romance

One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more.
—John Donne
Topics: Immortality

Pleasure is none, if not diversified.
—John Donne
Topics: Pleasure

For some not to be martyred is a martyrdom.
—John Donne

Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
—John Donne
Topics: Love, Beauty

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

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

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: Dying, Teamwork, Death, Kind, Help, Humanity, Cooperation, Friend

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

Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.
—John Donne
Topics: Self-reliance

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: Humanity, Humankind

God himself took a day to rest in, and a good man’s grave is his Sabbath.
—John Donne
Topics: Death

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: Scientists, Science

When I died last, and, Dear, I die as often as from thee I go though it be but an hour ago and lovers hours be full eternity.
—John Donne
Topics: Last Words

I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease.
—John Donne
Topics: Medicine, Doctors

Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls. For, thus friends absent speak.
—John Donne
Topics: Letters

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