Quotes from John Donne

That this world's general sickness doth not lie In any humour, or one certain part; But as thou sawest it rotten at the heart, Thou seest a hectic fever hath got hold Of the whole substance, not to be controlled, And that thou hast but one way, not to admit The world's infection, to be none of it.

As yet God suspends me between heaven and earth, as a meteor; and I am not in heaven because an earthly body clogs me, and I am not in the earth because a heavenly soul sustains me.

The afflictions of the wicked exasperate them, enrage them, stone and pave them, obdurate and petrify them, but they do not crucify them. The afflictions of the godly crucify them. And when I am come to that conformity with my Saviour, as to fulfill his sufferings in my fiesh, (as I am, when I glorify him in a Christian constancy and cheerfulness in my afflictions) then I am crucified with him, carried up to his cross...

MARK but this flea

Though she were true when you met her. and last till you write your letter, Yet she Will be False, ere I come, to two, or three.

phrase no man is an island means that no one is truly self-sufficient, everyone must rely on the company and comfort of others in order to thrive.

When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st not wind, But sigh'st my soul away; When thou weep'st, unkindly kind, My life's blood doth decay. It cannot be That thou lov'st me, as thou say'st, If in thine my life thou waste

But think that we Are but turn'd aside to sleep; They who one another keep Alive, ne'er parted be.

That so all vapours of all disobedience to thee, being subdued under my feet, I may, in the power and triumph of thy Son, tread victoriously upon my grave, and trample upon the lion and dragon [182] that lie under it to devour me.

Since thou and I sigh one another's breath, Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death.

The Sunne who goes so many miles in a minut, The Starres of the Firmament, which go so very many more, goe not so fast, as my body to the earth.

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. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do.

I need thy thunder, O my God; thy music will not serve me.

And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, The Element of fire is quite put out; The Sun is lost, and th'earth, and no mans wit Can well direct him where to looke for it ... 'Tis all in peeces, all coherence gone; All just supply, and all Relation.

man is so little, in respect of the greatest man, as the greatest in respect of God; for here, in that, we have not so much as a measure to try it by; proportion is no measure for infinity.

Thy breath in the congregation, thy word in the church, breathes communion and consolation here, and consummation hereafter;

Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown; Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one. My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest; Where can we find two better hemispheres Without sharp north, without declining west?

And, O my God, who madest thyself a light in a bush, in the midst of these brambles and thorns of a sharp sickness, appear unto me so that I may see thee, and know thee to be my God, applying thyself to me, even in these sharp and thorny passages.

Teach me to hear mermaids singing, Or to keep off envy's stinging, And find What wind Serves to advance an honest mind.

Yet though these ways be lost, thou hast left one, Which is, immoderate grief that she is gone. But we may 'scape that sin, yet weep as much; Our tears are due because we are not such. Some tears, that knot of friends, her death must cost, Because the chain is broke, but no link lost.

When love with one another so Interinanimates two souls, That abler soul, which thence doth flow, Defects of loneliness controls. We then, who are this new soul, know Of what we are compos'd and made, For th' atomies of which we grow Are souls, whom no change can invade.

The world's whole sap is sunk

We die and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love.

No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each 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 thine own Or of thine friend's were. Each man's death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.