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Quotes from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions — John Donne

1572–1631 England

← All quotes by John Donne

13 quotes

Man, who is the noblest part of the earth, melts so away as if he were a statue, not of earth, but of snow.

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

Variable, and therefore miserable condition of man; this minute I was well, and am ill, this minute.

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

He drinks misery, and he tastes happiness; he mows misery, and he gleaned happiness; he journeys in misery, he does but walked in happiness.

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

The flea, though he kill none, he does all the harm he can.

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

How deep do we dig, and for how coarse gold?

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

Age is a sickness, and Youth is an ambush.

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; 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.

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

Let not one bring Learning, another Diligence, another Religion, but every one bring all.

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

But I do nothing upon my self, and yet I am mine own Executioner.

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

I observe the physician, with the same diligence, as he the disease; I see he fears, and I fear with him...

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

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)

I know not what fear is, nor I know not what it is that I fear now; I fear not the hastening of my death, and yet I do fear the increase of the disease... my weakness is from nature, who hath but her measure, my strength is from God, who possesses and distributes infinitely.

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

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)

Attribution

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