100+ Quotes by John Donne
John Donne, a prominent English poet, is celebrated for his innovative and metaphysical approach to poetry during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. His literary legacy lies in his masterful fusion of intellectual exploration with emotional depth. Donne's poetry is characterized by its intricate use of conceits, where he blends seemingly disparate elements into surprising and intellectually stimulating comparisons. His "Holy Sonnets" are particularly renowned for their introspective examination of themes such as death, faith, and salvation. A former lawyer and cleric, Donne's life experiences enriched his work with a distinct perspective on the human condition. His metaphysical poetry continues to captivate readers with its intricate wordplay, spiritual contemplation, and keen observations of human love and mortality.
John Donne Quotes
Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes. (Meaning)
Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail. (Meaning)
More than kisses, letters mingle souls. (Meaning)
ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee (Meaning)
I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease. (Meaning)
Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification. (Meaning)
Death is an ascension to a better library. (Meaning)
No man is an island unto himself. (Meaning)
I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so. (Meaning)
Then love is sin, and let me sinful be. (Meaning)
Love's mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book. (Meaning)
Who are a little wise the best fools be. (Meaning)
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies. (Meaning)
What if this present were the world's last night? (Meaning)
For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love. (Meaning)
In heaven it is always autumn. (Meaning)
For love all love of other sights controls and makes one little room an everywhere (Meaning)
Death, thou shalt die. (Meaning)
No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.
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 a 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 bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.
Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes.
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
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.
More than kisses, letters mingle souls.
When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.
ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee
Full nakedness! All my joys are due to thee, as souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, to taste whole joys.
Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.
True joy is the earnest which we have of heaven, it is the treasure of the soul, and therefore should be laid in a safe place, and nothing in this world is safe to place it in.
Love's mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book.
we give each other a smile with a future in it
Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, With silken lines, and silver hooks.
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
O Lord, never suffer us to think that we can stand by ourselves, and not need thee.
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.
Sleep with clean hands, either kept clean all day by integrity or washed clean at night by repentance.
The flea, though he kill none, he does all the harm he can.
In heaven it is always autumn.
Death is an ascension to a better library.
For love all love of other sights controls and makes one little room an everywhere
In the first minute that my soul is infused, the Image of God is imprinted in my soul; so forward is God in my behalf, and so early does he visit me.
Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven.
No man is an island unto himself.
Art is the most passionate orgy within man's grasp.
Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, Angels affect us often.
As soon as there was two there was pride.
Now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.
How imperfect is all our knowledge!
Our two souls therefore which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat.
As he that fears God fears nothing else, so he that sees God sees everything else.
If I dream I have you, I have you, for all our joys are but fantastical.
Nothing but man of all envenomed things, doth work upon itself, with inborn stings.
I am a little world made cunningly.
And now good morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear; For love, all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room, an everywhere. Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone, Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown, Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
Solitude is a torment which is not threatened in hell itself.
I shall not live 'till I see God; and when I have seen Him, I shall never die.
God made sun and moon to distinguish the seasons, and day and night; and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons. But God hath made no decrees to distinguish the seasons of His mercies. In Paradise the fruits were ripe the first minute, and in heaven it is always autumn. His mercies are ever in their maturity.
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.
Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing.
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.
Only our love hath no decay; this, no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday, running it never runs from us away, but truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.
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.
Men perish with whispering sins-nay, with silent sins, sins that never tell the conscience that they are sins, as often with crying sins; and in hell there shall meet as many men that never thought what was sin, as that spent all their thoughts in the compassing of sin.
God himself took a day to rest in, and a good man's grave is his Sabbath.
How much shall I be changed, before I am changed!
I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease.
Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right, By these we reach divinity
Eternity is not an everlasting flux of time, but time is as a short parenthesis in a long period.
If we consider eternity, into that time never entered; eternity is not an everlasting flux of time, but time is as a short parenthesis in a long period; and eternity had been the same as it is, though time had never been.
For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love.
God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice.
I do not love a man, except I hate his vices, because those vices are the enemies, and the destruction of that friend whom I love.
Take me to you, imprison me, for I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free, nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
To be no part of any body, is to be nothing.
Licence my roving hands, and let them go Before, behind, between, above, below.
There is hook in every benefit, that sticks in his jaws that takes that benefit, and draws him whither the benefactor will.
How great love is, presence best trial makes, But absence tries how long this love will be.
Commemoration of Pandita Mary Ramabai, Translator of the Scriptures, 1922 A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a fear of tomorrow's dangers, a straw under my knees, a noise in my ear, a light in my eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayers.
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.
A man that is not afraid of a Lion is afraid of a Cat .
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.
Then love is sin, and let me sinful be.
"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."
Be more than man, or thou'rt less than an ant.
Pleasure is none, if not diversified.
I shall die reading; since my book and a grave are so near.
This only is charity, to do all, all that we can.
Thy face is mine eye, and mine is thine.
Chastity is not chastity in an old man, but a disability to be unchaste.
God affords no man the comfort, the false comfort of Atheism: He will not allow a pretending Atheist the power to flatter himself, so far, as to seriously think there is no God.
Poetry is a counterfeit creation, and makes things that are not, as though they were
All occasions invite His mercies, and all times are His seasons.
Love is a growing, or full constant light; And his first minute, after noon, is night.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure, then from thee much more, must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
I long to talk with some old lover's ghost, Who died before the god of love was born.
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
O how feeble is man's power, that if good fortune fall, cannot add another hour, nor a lost hour recall!
All mankind is one volume. When one man dies, a chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language. And every chapter must be translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice. But God's hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall live open to one another
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.
God is so omnipresent... God is an angel in an angel, and a stone in a stone, and a straw in a straw.
Who are a little wise the best fools be.
Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.
The sun must not set upon anger, much less will I let the sun set upon the anger of God towards me.
And what is so intricate, so entangling as death? Who ever got out of a winding sheet?
...Whatever dies was not mixed equally, If our two loves be one Or thou and I love so alike That none can slacken, none can die.
Keep us, Lord, so awake in the duties of our calling that we may sleep in thy peace and wake in thy glory.
Festive alcohol sometimes leads to an excess of honesty.
Nature hath no goal though she hath law.
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!
I count all that part of my life lost which I spent not in communion with God, or in doing good.
Friends are ourselves.
Our critical day is not the very day of our death; but the whole course of our life.
I sing the progress of a deathless soul.
Without outward declarations, who can conclude an inward love?
Young men mend not their sight by using old men's spectacles.
If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.
Verse hath a middle nature: heaven keeps souls, The grave keeps bodies, verse the fame enrols.
He that desires to print a book, should much more desire, to be a book.
The rich have no more of the kingdom of heaven than they have purchased of the poor by their alms.
One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
Good is not good, unless A thousand it possess, But doth waste with greediness.
As God loves a cheerful giver, so he also loves a cheerful taker. Who takes hold of his gifts with a glad heart.
Of all the commentaries on the Scriptures, good examples are the best.
The day breaks not, it is my heart.
Death, thou shalt die.
Change is the nursery Of musicke, joy, life and eternity.
Sleep is pain's easiest salve
Christ beats his drum, but he does not press men; Christ is served with voluntaries.
What if this present were the world's last night?
To know and feel all this and not have the words to express it makes a human a grave of his own thoughts.
The distance from nothing to a little, is ten thousand times more, than from it to the highest degree in this life.
We love and understand talent; we wish it be within us. The truly gifted, those exceptional few, must wait for the world to catch up.
Doth not a man die even in his birth? The breaking of prison is death, and what is our birth, but a breaking of prison?
To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend, All is the purlieu of the god of love.
I have done one braver thing than all the Worthies did, and yet a braver thence doth spring, which is, to keep that hid.
Great sorrows cannot speak.
Between cowardice and despair, valour is gendred.
Who knows his virtues name or place, hath none.
Religion is not a melancholy, the spirit of God is not a damper.
The Psalms foretell what I, what any shall do and suffer and say.
Women are like the arts, forced unto none, Open to all searchers, unprized, if unknown.
Yet nothing can to nothing fall, Nor any place be empty quite; Therefore I think my breast hath all Those pieces still, though they be not unite; And now, as broken glasses show A hundred lesser faces, so My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore, But after one such love, can love no more.
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.
All other things to their destruction draw, Only our love hath no decay.
But he who loveliness within Hath found, all outward loathes, For he who color loves, and skin, Loves but their oldest clothes.
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.
There is in every miracle a silent chiding of the world, and a tacit reprehension of them who require, or who need miracles.
Never start with tomorrow to reach eternity. Eternity is not being reached by small steps.
Yesternight the sun went hence, And yet is here today.
I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call and invite God and his angels thither.
Lust-bred diseases rot thee.
― John Donne Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
