Explore Quotes by John Donne

Reason is our soul's left hand, faith her right.

I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so in whining poetry.

But I do nothing upon myself, and yet I am my own executioner.

But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space.

That thou remember them, some claim as debt; I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.

I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so.

Yet nothing can to nothing fall, Nor any place be empty quite; Therefore I think my breast hath all Those pieces still, though they be not unite; And now, as broken glasses show A hundred lesser faces, so My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore, But after one such love, can love no more.

Then love is sin, and let me sinful be.

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 friend's 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 bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

It is too little to call man a little world; Except God, man is a diminutive to nothing.

What if this present were the world's last night?

And when a whirl-winde hath blowne the dust of the Churchyard into the Church, and man sweeps out the dust of the Church into the Church-yard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, and to pronounce, This is the Patrician, this is the noble flower, and this the yeomanly, this the Plebian bran.

Send home my long strayed eyes to me, Which (Oh) too long have dwelt on thee.

God affords no man the comfort, the false comfort of Atheism: He will not allow a pretending Atheist the power to flatter himself, so far, as to seriously think there is no God.

Take me to you, imprison me, for I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free, nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Nature hath no goal though she hath law.

Sleep with clean hands, either kept clean all day by integrity or washed clean at night by repentance.

O Lord, never suffer us to think that we can stand by ourselves, and not need thee.

Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

In the first minute that my soul is infused, the Image of God is imprinted in my soul; so forward is God in my behalf, and so early does he visit me.

God made sun and moon to distinguish the seasons, and day and night; and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons. But God hath made no decrees to distinguish the seasons of His mercies. In Paradise the fruits were ripe the first minute, and in heaven it is always autumn. His mercies are ever in their maturity.