Quotes from John Donne

First, I give my gracious God an entire sacrifice of body and soul, with my most humble thanks for that assurance which His Blessed Spirit imprints in me now of the Salvation of the one, and the Resurrection of the other;

O miserable condition of man, which is not imprinted by God, who, as he is immortal himself, had put a coal, a beam of immortality into us, which we might have blown into a flame, but blew it by our first sin; we beggared ourselves by hearkening after falses riches, and infatuated ourselves by hearkening after false knowledge.

Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.

Hee that hath all can have no more

The force of originality "that made Donne so potent an influence in the seventeenth century makes him now at once for us, without his being the less felt as of his period, contemporary—obviously a living poet in the most important sense." In "The Good-Morrow" Leavis said that

I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him meerly seise me, and only declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwrack, I would do it in a Sea, where mine impotencie might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.

No man is an island entirely of itself. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.

Thou, sun, art half as happy as we.

Send me nor this, nor that, to increase my store, But swear thou think'st I love thee, and no more.

I joy, that in these straits I see my west;

Every woman is a science; for he that plods upon a woman all his life long, shall at length finde himself short of the knowledge of her.

As virtuous men pass mildly away And whisper to their souls, to goe, While some of their friends doe say, The breath goes now, and some say, no: So let us melt, and make no noise...

What poore Elements are our happinesses made off, if Tyme, Tyme which wee can scarce consider to be any thing, be an essential part of our happines?

For the first twenty years, since yesterday, I scarce believed thou could'st be gone away; For forty more, I fed on favors past, And forty' on hopes, that thou would'st they might last. Tears drowned one hundred, and sighs blew out two; A thousand, I did neither think, nor do, Or not divide, all being one thought of you; Or, in a thousand more, forget that too. Yet call not this, long life, but think that I Am, by being dead, immortal; can ghosts die?

It was part of Adam's punishment, In the sweat of thy brows thou shalt eat thy bread: it is multiplied to me, I have earned bread in the sweat of my brows, in the labour of my calling, and I have it; and I sweat again and again, from the brow to the sole of the foot, but I eat no bread, I taste no sustenance: miserable distribution of mankind, where one half lacks meat, and the other stomach!

I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so In whining poetry; But where's that wiseman, that would not be I, If she would not deny? Then as th' earth's inward narrow crooked lanes Do purge sea water's fretful salt away, I thought, if I could draw my pains Through rhyme's vexation, I should them allay. Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce, For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

lovers' hours be full eternity

You are earth; he whom you tread upon is no less, and he that treads upon you is no more.

Nature hath no gaol, though she hath law.

The World is a great Volume, and man the Index of that Booke; even in the Body of Man, you may turne to the whole world.

To adore, or scorne an image, or protest, May all be bad; doubt wisely, in strange way To stand inquiring right, is not to stray; To sleepe, or runne wrong, is: on a huge hill, Cragg'd, and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will Reach her, about must, and about must goe; And what the hills suddenes resists, winne so; Yet strive so, that before age, deaths twilight, Thy Soule rest, for none can worke in that night.

No man ever saw God and lived; and yet, I shall not live till I see God; and when I have seen him I shall never die

Are not heavens joyes as valiant to asswage Lusts, as earths honour was to them?

I sing the progress of a deathless soul, Whom Fate, which God made, but doth not control, Placed in most shapes; all times before the law Yoked us, and when, and since, in this I sing. And the great world to his aged evening, From infant morn, through manly noon I draw.