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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
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150 quotes
My God, my God, thou art a direct God, may I not say a literal God, a God that wouldst be understood literally and according to the plain sense of all that thou sayest? But thou art also...a figurative, a metaphorical God too.
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)
When my grave is broke up again
Poems (1633)
It comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes. The ashes of an Oak in the Chimney, are no epitaph of that Oak, to tell me how high or how large that was; It tells me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell. The dust of great persons’ graves is speechless too, it says nothing, it distinguishes nothing: As soon the dust of a wretch whom thou wouldest not, as of a Prince whom thou couldest not look upon, will trouble thine eyes, if the wind blow it thither; and when a whirlwind hath blown the dust of the Churchyard into the Church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the Church into the Churchyard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, and to pronounce, This is the Patrician, this is the noble flower, and this the yeomanly, this the Plebeian bran.
LXXX Sermons (1640)
A memory of yesterday’s pleasures, a fear of tomorrow’s dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayer. So certainly is there nothing, nothing in spiritual things, perfect in this world.
LXXX Sermons (1640)
From this I testify her holy cheerfulness, and religious alacrity, (one of the best evidences of a good conscience), that as she came to this place, God’s house of Prayer...she ever hastened her family, and her company hither, with that cheerful provocation, For God’s sake let’s go, For God’s sake let’s be there at the Confession.
A Sermon of Commemoration of the Lady Danvers (1627)
To worthiest things, virtue, art, beauty, fortune, now I see, rareness of use, not nature value brings.
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Despair...is the damp of hell; rejoicing is the serenity of heaven.
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Oh, for some
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He was the Word, that spake it:
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Absence, hear thou my protestation
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