Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
John DonneRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the enduring impact of love despite its loss and fragmentation.
John Donne's quote expresses the idea that even when love is lost and one's heart feels fragmented, the remnants of that love continue to exist within. He uses the metaphor of broken glass reflecting multiple lesser images to illustrate how the experience of love, even when it leads to heartbreak, continues to influence one's emotional landscape. The speaker acknowledges the lasting impressions that such deep feelings leave behind, indicating that while one may no longer be able to love in the same way after such an experience, the capacity for affection and admiration remains, albeit altered.
Themes
LoveHeartbreakLossMemoriesFragments
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the complexities of love at a wedding.
More from John Donne
All quotes →Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right, By these we reach divinity
John DonneRead
All occasions invite His mercies, and all times are His seasons.
John DonneRead
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 DonneRead
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.
John DonneRead
I call not that virginity a virtue, which resideth onely in the bodies integrity; much less if it be with a purpose of perpetually keeping it: for then it is a most inhumane vice. - But I call that Virginity a virtue which is willing and desirous to yield it self upon honest and lawfull terms, when just reason requireth; and until then, is kept with a modest chastity of body and mind.
John DonneRead
Similar quotes
Love will enter cloaked in friendship's name.
OvidRead
But if I lost you, it would devastate me as nothing else has or ever could. You have so much power over me and that’s frightening.
Maya BanksRead
A man kills the thing he loves, and he must die a little himself.
Clive BarkerRead
To love! To surrender absolutely, to prostrate oneself before the divine image, to die a thousand imaginary deaths, to annihilate every trace of self, to find the whole universe embodied and enshrined in the living image of another! Adolescent, we say. Rot! This is the germ of the future life, the seed which we hide away, which we bury deep within us, which we smother and stifle and do our utmost to destroy as we advance from one experience to another and flutter and flounder and lose our way.
Henry MillerRead
I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you. And if you were to leave I'm afraid that cord of communion would snap. And I have a notion that I'd take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you'd forget me.
Charlotte BronteRead
Dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as well as our friend.
Dorothy DayRead