John Donne: Trending quotes

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John Donne: 230 quotes28 likes

“Though Truth and Falsehood be
Near twins, yet Truth a little elder is.”

Satyre III (c. 1598)

“Who ever loves, if he do not propose
The right true end of love, he's one that goes
To sea for nothing but to make him sick.”

No. 18, Love's Progress, line 1
Elegies

“Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes, upon one double string;
So to entergraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.”

The Extasy, line 7

“We understood
Her by her sight; her pure, and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,
That one might almost say, her body thought.”

Of the Progress of the Soul, The Second Anniversary

“Variable, and therefore miserable condition of man; this minute I was well, and am ill, this minute.”

I. Insultus Morbi Primus; The first alteration, the first grudging of the sickness.
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

“A bracelet of bright hair about the bone.”

The Relic, stanza 1

“Since I am coming to that holy room,
Where, with thy choir of saints forevermore,
I shall be made thy music; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before.”

Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness, stanza 1

“Man, who is the noblest part of the earth, melts so away as if he were a statue, not of earth, but of snow.”

II. Actio Læsa; The strength, and the functions of the senses, and other faculties change and fail.
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

“Who ever comes to shroud me, do not harm
Nor question much
That subtle wreth 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.”

John Donne The Funeral

The Funeral, stanza 1

“Oh do not die, for I shall hate
All women so, when thou art gone.”

A Fever, stanza 1

“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.”

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, stanza 6

“But think that we
Are but turned aside to sleep.”

Song (Sweetest Love, I Do Not Go), stanza 5

“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.”

No. 80, preached at the funeral of Sir William Cokayne, December 12, 1626
LXXX Sermons (1640)

“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.”

No. 3, preached on Christmas Day, 1625
LXXX Sermons (1640)

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

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, stanza 7

“Sweetest love, I do not go,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;
But since that I
Must die at last, 'tis best,
To use my self in jest
Thus by feigned deaths to die.”

Song (Sweetest Love, I Do Not Go), stanza 1

“The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts
Not of two lovers, but two loves the nests.”

No. 18, Love's Progress, line 61
Elegies

“If poisonous minerals, and if that tree,
Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious
Cannot be damned; alas; why should I be?”

John Donne book Holy Sonnets

No. 9, line 1
Holy Sonnets (1633)

“She, and comparisons are odious.”

No. 8, The Comparison, line 54. Compare: "Comparisons are odious", John Fortescue, De Laudibus Leg. Angliæ, Chap. xix; "Comparisons are odorous", William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, act iii, scene v
Elegies

“Enlarge this meditation upon this great world, man, so far, as to consider the immensity of the creatures this world produces; our creatures are our thoughts, creatures that are born giants; that reach from east to west, from earth to heaven, that do not only bestride all the sea and land, but span the sun and firmament at once; my thoughts reach all, comprehend all. Inexplicable mystery; I their creator am in a close prison, in a sick bed, anywhere, and any one of my creatures, my thoughts, is with the sun, and beyond the sun, overtakes the sun, and overgoes the sun in one pace, one step, everywhere.”

IV. Mediscque Vocatur; The physician is sent for.
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)