“Poor intricated soul! Riddling, perplexed, labyrinthical soul!”
No. 48, preached upon the Day of St. Paul's Conversion, January 25, 1629
LXXX Sermons (1640)
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John Donne 115
English poet 1572–1631Related quotes

“… disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business….”
Source: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole
Can never be a mouse of any soul.”
"The Wife of Bath her Prologue, from Chaucer" (c.1704, published 1713), lines 298-299. Compare: "I hold a mouses wit not worth a leke, That hath but on hole for to sterten to", Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, "The Wif of Bathes Prologue", line 6154; "The mouse that hath but one hole is quickly taken", George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum.

Source: Across the Plains (1892), Ch. VII, The Lantern-Bearers.
Context: The observer (poor soul, with his documents!) is all abroad. For to look at the man is but to court deception. We shall see the trunk from which he draws his nourishment; but he himself is above and abroad in the green dome of foliage, hummed through by winds and nested in by nightingales. And the true realism were that of the poets, to climb up after him like a squirrel, and catch some glimpse of the heaven for which he lives. And, the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all. In the joy of the actors lies the sense of any action.

Ref. http://www.flickr.com/photos/100gurus/4888480241/.

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 28.