1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. John Donne

John Donne Quotes
page 2

John Donne was an English poet and cleric in the Church of England.

He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are noted for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially compared to that of his contemporaries. Donne's style is characterised by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. These features, along with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax and his tough eloquence, were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques. His early career was marked by poetry that bore immense knowledge of English society and he met that knowledge with sharp criticism. Another important theme in Donne's poetry is the idea of true religion, something that he spent much time considering and about which he often theorized. He wrote secular poems as well as erotic and love poems. He is particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysical conceits.

Despite his great education and poetic talents, Donne lived in poverty for several years, relying heavily on wealthy friends. He spent much of the money he inherited during and after his education on womanising, literature, pastimes, and travel. In 1601, Donne secretly married Anne More, with whom he had twelve children. In 1615, he became an Anglican priest, although he did not want to take Anglican orders. He did so because King James I persistently ordered it. In 1621, he was appointed the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London. He also served as a member of Parliament in 1601 and in 1614.

✵ 1572 – 31. March 1631
John Donne photo
John Donne: 115   quotes 28   likes

John Donne Quotes

“Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?”

John Donne

The Sun Rising, stanza 1

Fools , Lovers , Business , Sun

“What gnashing is not a comfort, what gnawing of the worm is not a tickling, what torment is not a marriage bed to this damnation, to be secluded eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight of God?”

John Donne

No. 76, preached to the Earl of Carlisle, c. autumn 1622
LXXX Sermons (1640)

God , Marriage

“But he who loveliness within
Hath found, all outward loathes,
For he who color loves, and skin,
Loves but their oldest clothes.”

John Donne

The Undertaking, stanza 4

Love , Color , Clothes

“And new philosophy calls all in doubt,
The element of fire is quite put out;
The sun is lost, and the earth, and no man's wit,
Can well direct him where to look for it.
And freely men confess that this world's spent,
When in the planets, and the firmament
They seek so many new; then see that this
Is crumbled out again to his atomies.
'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone;
All just supply, and all relation:
Prince, subject, Father, Son, are things forgot.”

John Donne

An Anatomy of the World, The First Anniversary

Men , World , Sun

“O my America! my new-found land.”

John Donne book Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed

No. 19, To His Mistress Going to Bed, line 27
Elegies

“All Kings, and all their favorites,
All glory of honors, beauties, wits
The sun itself, which makes times, as they pass,
Is elder by a year, now, than it was
When thou and I first one another saw:
All other things, to their destruction draw,
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.”

John Donne

The Anniversary, stanza 1

Love , Beauty , Time , Sun

“When I died last, and dear, I die
As often as from thee I go.”

John Donne

The Legacy, stanza 1

“I know not what fear is, nor I know not what it is that I fear now; I fear not the hastening of my death, and yet I do fear the increase of the disease… my weakness is from nature, who hath but her measure, my strength is from God, who possesses and distributes infinitely.”

John Donne

VI. Metuit. The physician is afraid
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

Death , God , Fear , Disease

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

John Donne

Satyre III (c. 1598)

Truth

“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.”

John Donne

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

Love , Sea

“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.”

John Donne

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.”

John Donne

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.”

John Donne

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.”

John Donne

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.”

John Donne

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

Music , Thinking

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

John Donne

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

Parting

“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

Soul , Question

“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.”

John Donne

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, stanza 6

Soul

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

John Donne

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

Thinking , Sleep

“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.”

John Donne

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

God , Angels , Flying

“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.”

John Donne

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

God , Spring , Time , Sun

“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.”

John Donne

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, stanza 7

Soul

“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.”

John Donne

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

Love , Death , World , Hope

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

John Donne

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

Love , Lovers

“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)

Death , Tree

“She, and comparisons are odious.”

John Donne

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.”

John Donne

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

World , Sun , Sea

“How deepe do we dig, and for how coarse gold?”

John Donne

Meditation 13
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

“Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love.”

John Donne

No. 7, Natures Lay Idiot, line 1
Elegies

Love , Nature

“A man that is not afraid of a Lion is afraid of a Cat; not afraid of starving, and yet is afraid of some joint of meat at the table, presented to feed him; not afraid of the sound of drums, and trumpets, and shot, and those, which they seek to drown, the last cries of men, and is afraid of some particular harmonious instrument; so much afraid, as that with any of these the enemy might drive this man, otherwise valiant enough, out of the field.”

John Donne

VI. Metuit. The physician is afraid
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

Men , Cats

“Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.”

John Donne

Song (Go and Catch a Falling Star), stanza 1

Star , Singing , Past , Envy

“Absence, hear thou my protestation
Against thy strength,
Distance, and length;
Do what thou canst for alteration”

John Donne

Poem Present in Absence http://www.bartleby.com/101/197.html
Attribution likely but not proven http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-7937(191107)6%3A3%3C383%3ATAO%22HT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B

“I do nothing upon myself, and yet am mine own executioner.”

John Donne

Meditation 12
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

“She is all states, and all princes, I,
Nothing else is.”

John Donne

The Sun Rising, stanza 3

“Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend.”

John Donne book Holy Sonnets

No. 14, line 1
Holy Sonnets (1633)

God , Heart , Personality

“Take heed of loving me.”

John Donne

The Prohibition, stanza 1

Love

“No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”

John Donne book Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

Modern version: 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 friends 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.
Meditation 17. This was the source for the title of Ernest Hemingway's novel.
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

Self-confidence , Bee , Sea , Death

“At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go.”

John Donne book Holy Sonnets

No. 7, line 1
Holy Sonnets (1633)

Soul , Angels , Death

“We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are composed and made,
For the' atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
But oh alas, so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They're ours, though they're not we; we are
The intelligences, they the spheres.”

John Donne

The Ecstasy, line 45

Soul , Intelligence , Change

“I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

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.

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?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.”

John Donne Songs and Sonnets

Songs and Sonnets (1633), The Good-Morrow

Soul , Sea , Country , Love