John Donne Quotes

1572–1631 England

John Donne (22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) was a Jacobean metaphysical poet. His works include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, and sermons.

England
Lawyers
Poets
Politicians
Songwriters

Also known as: Donne, Donne, John

Random John Donne quote

150 quotes

The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I
Abjure my so much loved variety.

Poems (1633)

I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry.

Poems (1633)

Who ever loves, if he do not propose
The right true end of love, he's one that goes
To sea for nothing but to make him sick.

Poems (1633)

Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I begun.

Poems (1633)

When I died last, and dear, I die
As often as from thee I go.

Poems (1633)

Oh wrangling schools, that search what fire
Shall burn this world, had none the wit
Unto this knowledge to aspire,
That this her fever might be it?

Poems (1633)

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.

Clothed in her virgin white integrity.

A Funeral Elegy (1610)

That which we call life, is but hebdomada mortium, a week of death, seven days, seven periods of our life spent in dying, a dying seven times over; and there is an end.

XXVI Sermons (1661)

It is too little to call man a little world, except God, man is a diminutive to nothing. Man consists of more pieces, more parts, than the world; than the world doth, nay, than the world is.

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

Seal then this bill of my divorce to all.

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

Poems (1633)

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two,
Thy soul the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.

Poems (1633)

At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go.

Poems (1633)

We have a winding sheet in our mother’s womb, which grows with us from our conception, and we come into the world, wound up in that winding sheet, for we come to seek a grave.

XXVI Sermons (1661)

Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke.

Poems (1633)

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.

Poems (1633)

Nurse, O! my love is slain; I saw him go
O'er the white Alps alone; I saw him, I,
Assail'd, fight, taken, stabb'd, bleed, fall, and die.

Poems (1633)

She is all states, and all princes, I,
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honour’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.

Poems (1633)

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and their map, who lie
Flat on this bed.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John Donne (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.