John Donne Quotes
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Licence my roving hands, and let them go Before, behind, between, above, below. O, my America, my Newfoundland My kingdom, safest when with one man mann'd, My mine of precious stones, my empery; How am I blest in thus discovering thee ! To enter in these bonds, is to be free ; Then, where my hand is set, my soul shall be.'
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To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend, All is the purlieu of the god of love.
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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?
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I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so in whining poetry.
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Send home my long strayed eyes to me, Which (Oh) too long have dwelt on thee.
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She is all states, and all princes, I, Nothing else is.
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Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so. For, those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow. Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
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But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space.
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Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
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Man, who is the noblest part of the earth, melts so away as if he were a statue, not of earth, but of snow.
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Since you would save none of me, I bury some of you.
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Busy old fool, unruly Sun, why dost thou thus through windows and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?
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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.
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Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
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Age is a sicknesse, and Youth is an ambush.
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As virtuous men pass mildly away, and whisper to their souls to go, whilst some of their sad friends do say, the breath goes now, and some say no.
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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.
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When God's hand is bent to strike, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God; but to fall out of the hands of the living God is a horror beyond our expression, beyond our imagination.
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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.
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Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.
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So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss, Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away.
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Reason is our soul's left hand, faith her right.
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God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice.
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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.