John Donne Quotes
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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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Since you would save none of me, I bury some of you.
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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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I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so in whining poetry.
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Love's mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book.
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And swear No where Lives a woman true and fair. If thou find'st one, let me know, Such a pilgrimage were sweet; Yet do not, I would not go, Though at next door we might meet, Though she were true, when you met her, And last, till you write your letter, Yet she Will be False, ere I come, to two, or three.
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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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If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two, Thy soul the fixt foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do.
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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.
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But he who loveliness within Hath found, all outward loathes, For he who color loves, and skin, Loves but their oldest clothes.
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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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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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I long to talk with some old lover's ghost, Who died before the god of love was born.
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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.
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Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.
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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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Yesternight the sun went hence, And yet is here today.
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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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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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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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As states subsist in part by keeping their weaknesses from being known, so is it the quiet of families to have their chancery and their parliament within doors, and to compose and determine all emergent differences there.
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So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss, Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away.
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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?