Top 246 Quotes & Sayings by John Donne

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British poet John Donne.

Last updated on December 23, 2024.

John Donne was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a cleric in the Church of England. Under royal patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London (1621–1631). He is considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His poetical works are noted for their metaphorical and sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, and satires. He is also known for his sermons.

British - Poet | 1572 - March 31, 1631

Source: Wikipedia

Since you would save none of me, I bury some of you.

John Donne

Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.

John Donne

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.

John Donne

For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love.

John Donne

The day breaks not, it is my heart.

John Donne

God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice.

John Donne

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.

John Donne

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.

John Donne

He must pull out his own eyes, and see no creature, before he can say, he sees no God; He must be no man, and quench his reasonable soul, before he can say to himself, there is no God.

John Donne

And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, the element of fire is quite put out; the Sun is lost, and the earth, and no mans wit can well direct him where to look for it.

John Donne

When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.

John Donne

Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.

John Donne

Pleasure is none, if not diversified.

John Donne

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

John Donne

Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing.

John Donne

More than kisses, letters mingle souls.

John Donne

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.

John Donne

Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.

John Donne

Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven.

John Donne

Reason is our soul's left hand, faith her right.

John Donne

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.

John Donne

Busy old fool, unruly Sun, why dost thou thus through windows and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?

John Donne

Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.

John Donne

Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.

John Donne

Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

John Donne

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.

John Donne

But I do nothing upon myself, and yet I am my own executioner.

John Donne

I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease.

John Donne

Art is the most passionate orgy within man's grasp.

John Donne

But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space.

John Donne

To know and feel all this and not have the words to express it makes a human a grave of his own thoughts.

John Donne

The distance from nothing to a little, is ten thousand times more, than from it to the highest degree in this life.

John Donne

As soon as there was two there was pride.

John Donne

To be no part of any body, is to be nothing.

John Donne

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 friend's 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 bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne

Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, With silken lines, and silver hooks.

John Donne

As he that fears God fears nothing else, so he that sees God sees everything else.

John Donne

I shall not live 'till I see God; and when I have seen Him, I shall never die.

John Donne

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we lov'd?

John Donne

Without outward declarations, who can conclude an inward love?

John Donne

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated....As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all....No man is an island, entire of itself...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.

John Donne

O Lord, never suffer us to think that we can stand by ourselves, and not need thee.

John Donne

Good is not good, unless A thousand it possess, But doth waste with greediness.

John Donne

Chastity is not chastity in an old man, but a disability to be unchaste.

John Donne

Death is an ascension to a better library.

John Donne

we give each other a smile with a future in it

John Donne

The rich have no more of the kingdom of heaven than they have purchased of the poor by their alms.

John Donne

We study health, and we deliberate upon our meats and drink and air and exercises, and we hew and we polish every stone that goes to that building; and so our health is a long and regular work. But in a minute a cannon batters all, overthrows all, demolishes all; a sickness unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiosity, nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroys us in an instant.

John Donne

How much shall I be changed, before I am changed!

John Donne

. . . Change is the nursery Of musicke, joy, life and eternity.

John Donne

Sleep with clean hands, either kept clean all day by integrity or washed clean at night by repentance.

John Donne

Young men mend not their sight by using old men's spectacles.

John Donne

ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee

John Donne

I do not love a man, except I hate his vices, because those vices are the enemies, and the destruction of that friend whom I love.

John Donne

How imperfect is all our knowledge!

John Donne

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

John Donne

Love was as subtly caught, as a disease; But being got it is a treasure sweet, which to defend is harder than to get: And ought not be profaned on either part, for though 'Tis got by chance, 'Tis kept by art.

John Donne

Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes.

John Donne

I count all that part of my life lost which I spent not in communion with God, or in doing good.

John Donne

As God loves a cheerful giver, so he also loves a cheerful taker. Who takes hold of his gifts with a glad heart.

John Donne