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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I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so in whining poetry.
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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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God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice.
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Age is a sicknesse, and Youth is an ambush.
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Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
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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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Love's mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book.
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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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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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Yesternight the sun went hence, And yet is here today.
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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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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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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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Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
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Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.
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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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So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss, Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away.
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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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Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.