Explore Quotes by John Donne

We can die by it, if not live by love, And if unfit for tombs and hearse Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; And if no peace of chronicle we prove, We'll build in sonnet pretty rooms; As well a well wrought urne becomes The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs.

I long to talk with some old lover's ghost, Who died before the god of love was born.

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

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 feign'd deaths to die.

For I am every dead thing In whom love wrought new alchemy For his art did express A quintessence even from nothingness, From dull privations, and lean emptiness He ruined me, and I am re-begot Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not.

Love is strong as death; but nothing else is as strong as either; and both, love and death, met in Christ. How strong and powerful upon you, then, should that instruction be, that comes to you from both these, the love and death of Jesus Christ!

I do not love a man, except I hate his vices, because those vices are the enemies, and the destruction of that friend whom I love.

This Extasie doth unperplex (We said) and tell us what we love, Wee see by this, it was not sexe, Wee see, we saw not what did move: But as all severall soules contain Mixture of things, they know not what, Love, these mixt souls, doth mixe againe. Loves mysteries in soules doe grow, But yet the body is his booke.

Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be? O wilt thou therefore rise from me? Why should we rise, because 'tis light? Did we lie down, because 'twas night? Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither Should in despite of light keep us together.

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 hash, nor yesterday, Running, it never runs from us away, But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

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.

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's.

. . . Change is the nursery Of musicke, joy, life and eternity.

And swear No where Lives a woman true, and fair.

All mankind is one volume. When one man dies, a chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language. And every chapter must be translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice. But God's hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall live open to one another

So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss, Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away.

One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

The sun must not set upon anger, much less will I let the sun set upon the anger of God towards me.

That subtle knot which makes us man So must pure lovers souls descend T affections, and to faculties, Which sense may reach and apprehend, Else a great Prince in prison lies.

O how feeble is man's power, that if good fortune fall, cannot add another hour, nor a lost hour recall!

Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfil_x000D_All offices of death, except to kill.