John Donne

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.

Quotes

Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls;
For, thus friends absent speak.
- Verse Letter to Sir Henry Wotton, written before April 1598, line 1

And seeing the snail, which everywhere doth roam,
Carrying his own house still, still is at home,
Follow (for he is easy paced) this snail,
Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy gaol.
- Verse Letter to Sir Henry Wotton

I sing the progress of a deathless soul.
- The Progress of the Soul (1601), stanza 1

Great Destiny, the commissary of God.
- The Progress of the Soul (1601), stanza 4

So, of a lone unhaunted place possess’d,
Did this soul’s second inn, built by the guest,
This living buried man, this quiet mandrake, rest.
- The Progress of the Soul (1601), stanza 16

Nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant,
The only harmless great thing.
- The Progress of the Soul (1601), stanza 39

Friends are ourselves.
- To Ben Johnson (6 Jan. 1603)

Immensity, cloister'd in thy dear womb,
Now leaves His well-beloved imprisonment.
- La Corona (1609), 3. Nativity

Clothed in her virgin white integrity.
- A Funeral Elegy (1610)

And new philosophy calls all in doubt,
The element of fire is quite put out;
The sun is lost, and the earth, and no man's wit,
Can well direct him where to look for it.
And freely men confess that this world's spent,
When in the planets, and the firmament
They seek so many new; then see that this
Is crumbled out again to his atomies.
'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone;
All just supply, and all relation:
Prince, subject, Father, Son, are things forgot.
- An Anatomy of the World: The First Anniversary (1611), l. 205

She, she is dead; she’s dead; when thou know’st this,
Thou know’st how dry a cinder this world is.
- An Anatomy of the World, l. 427

There is no health; physicians say, that we
At best enjoy but a neutrality.
- An Anatomy of the World

For good or evil must in our actions meet;
Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.
- An Anatomy of the World

Think then, my soul, that death is but a groom,
Which brings a taper to the outward room.
- Of the Progress of the Soul: The Second Anniversary (1612), l. 85

Her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,
That one might almost say, her body thought.
- Of the Progress of the Soul, l. 244

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.
- Of the Progress of the Soul

Hail Bishop Valentine, whose day this is;
All the air is thy diocese.
- An Epithalamion...on the Lady Elizabeth and Count Palatine being Married on St. Valentine’s Day (1613)

The lyric lark, and the grave whispering dove,
The sparrow that neglects his life for love,
The household bird with the red stomacher.
- An Epithalamion...on St. Valentine’s Day

The maskers come late, and I think will stay,
Like fairies, till the cock crow them away.
- An Epithalamion...on St. Valentine’s Day

As Thou
Art jealous, Lord, so I am jealous now;
Thou lovest not, till from loving more Thou free
My soul; Who ever gives, takes liberty;
Oh, if Thou carest not whom I love,
Alas! Thou lovest not me.
- A Hymn to Christ, at the Author’s last going into Germany (1619), stanza 3

Seal then this bill of my divorce to all.
- A Hymn to Christ, at the Author’s last going into Germany, stanza 4

To see God only, I go out of sight;
And to escape stormy days, I choose
An everlasting night.
- A Hymn to Christ, at the Author’s last going into Germany, stanza 4

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallow'd in, a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
- A Hymn to God the Father (1623), stanzas 1 and 2

Since I am coming to that holy room,
Where, with thy choir of saints forevermore,
I shall be made thy music; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before.
- Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness (1623), stanza 1

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and their map, who lie
Flat on this bed.
- Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness, stanza 2

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)

Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfill
All offices of death, except to kill.
- To Mr. Christopher Brooke: The Storm, line 35

To roam
Giddily and be everywhere, but at home,
Such freedom doth a banishment become.
- To Mr. Rowland Woodward, stanza 10

Virtue has some perverseness, for she will
Neither believe her good, nor others' ill.
- To the Countess of Bedford [III]

Poems (1633, '35, '50, '69)

Songs and Sonnets

Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour 'prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
- The Sun Rising, stanza 1

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.
- The Sun Rising, stanza 3

This bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere.
- The Sun Rising, last line

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
- Song (Go and Catch a Falling Star), stanza 1

And swear
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.
If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.
- Song (Go and Catch a Falling Star), stanzas 2-3

I have done one braver thing
Than all the Worthies did;
And yet a braver thence doth spring,
Which is to keep that hid.
- The Undertaking, stanza 1

But he who loveliness within
Hath found, all outward loathes,
For he who color loves, and skin,
Loves but their oldest clothes.
- The Undertaking, stanza 4

And dare love that, and say so too,
And forget the He and She.
- The Undertaking, stanza 5

For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love;
Or chide my palsy, or my gout;
My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout;
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve;
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his Honour, or his Grace;
Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face
Contemplate ; what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.
- The Canonization, stanza 1

Alas! alas! who's injured by my love?
What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd?
Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.
- The Canonization, stanza 2

The Phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us, we two being one, are it.
So to one neutral thing both sexes fit,
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.
- The Canonization, stanza 3

As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs.
- The Canonization, stanza 4

I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry.
- The Triple Fool, stanza 1

Who are a little wise, the best fools be.
- The Triple Fool, stanza 2

Sweetest love, I do not go,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;
But since that I
Must die at last, 'tis best,
To use my self in jest
Thus by feigned deaths to die.
- Song (Sweetest Love, I Do Not Go), stanza 1

Yesternight the sun went hence,
And yet is here today.
- Song (Sweetest Love, I Do Not Go), stanza 2

But think that we
Are but turned aside to sleep.
- Song (Sweetest Love, I Do Not Go), stanza 5

When I died last, and dear, I die
As often as from thee I go.
- The Legacy, stanza 1

Oh do not die, for I shall hate
All women so, when thou art gone.
- A Fever, stanza 1

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?
- A Fever, stanza 4

For I had rather owner be
Of thee one hour, than all else ever.
- A Fever, stanza 7

Twice and thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be.
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing did I see.
- Air and Angels, stanza 1

Just such disparity
As is ’twixt air and angels’ purity,
’Twixt women’s love, and men’s will ever be.
- Air and Angels

Stay, O sweet, and do not rise;
The light that shines comes from thine eyes;
The day breaks not, it is my heart,
Because that you and I must part.
Stay, or else my joys will die,
And perish in their infancy.
- Break of Day [I]

'Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be?
O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise, because 'tis light?
Did we lie down, because 'twas night?
Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither
Should in despite of light keep us together.
- Break of Day [II], stanza 1

He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.
- Break of Day [II], stanza 3

All kings, and all their favourites,
All glory of honors, beauties, wits
The sun itself, which makes times, as they pass,
Is elder by a year, now, than it was
When thou and I first one another saw:
All other things, to their destruction draw,
Only our love hath no decay;
This, no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday,
Running, it never runs from us away,
But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.
- The Anniversary, stanza 1

Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
Years and years unto years, till we attain
To write threescore: this is the second of our reign.
- The Anniversary, last stanza

Send home my long strayed eyes to me,
Which (Oh) too long have dwelt on thee.
- The Message, stanza 1

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's.
- A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day, stanza 1

The world's whole sap is sunk:
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interred; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.
- A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day, stanza 1

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.
- A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day, stanza 2

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.
- The Bait, stanza 1

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
- A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, stanza 4

Our two souls therefore which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
- A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, stanza 6

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.
- A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, stanza 7

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:
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
’Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
- A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, stanzas 1 and 2

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.
- stanza 6

Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I begun.
- A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, stanza 9

O more than moon,
Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere,
Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear
To teach the sea what it may do too soon.
- A Valediction of Weeping

Where, like a pillow on a bed,
A pregnant bank swelled up, to rest
The violet’s reclining head,
Sat we two, one another’s best.
- The Ecstasy, line 1

Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes, upon one double string;
So to entergraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
- The Ecstasy, line 7

And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day, the same our postures were,
And we said nothing, all the day.
- The Ecstasy, line 17

We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are composed and made,
For the' atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
But oh alas, so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They're ours, though they're not we; we are
The intelligences, they the spheres.
- The Ecstasy, line 45

That subtle knot which makes us man:
So must pure lovers' souls descend
T' affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great Prince in prison lies.
- The Ecstasy, line 64

Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
- The Ecstasy, line 71

I long to talk with some old lover's ghost,
Who died before the god of love was born.
- Love's Deity, stanza 1

To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend,
All is the purlieu of the god of love.
- Love's Deity, stanza 3

To what a cumbersome unwieldiness
And burdenous corpulence my love had grown,
But that I did, to make it less,
And keep it in proportion,
Give it a diet, made it feed upon
That which love worst endures, discretion.
- Love's Diet, stanza 1

Keep midnight's promise; mistake by the way
The maid, and tell the lady of that delay;
Only let me love none; no, not the sport
From country grass to confitures of court,
Or city's quelque-choses; let not report
My mind transport.
- Love's Usury, stanza 2

Who ever comes to shroud me, do not harm
Nor question much
That subtle wreath of hair, which crowns my arm;
The mystery, the sign you must not touch,
For 'tis my outward soul,
Viceroy to that, which then to heaven being gone,
Will leave this to control,
And keep these limbs, her provinces, from dissolution.
- The Funeral, stanza 1

When my grave is broke up again
Some second guest to entertain,
(For graves have learnt that woman-head
To be to more than one a bed)
And he that digs it, spies
A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,
Will he not let us alone?
- The Relic, stanza 1

Take heed of loving me.
- The Prohibition, stanza 1

So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss,
Which sucks two souls, and vapours both away,
Turn thou ghost that way, and let me turn this,
And let our selves benight our happiest day.
We asked none leave to love; nor will we owe
Any, so cheap a death, as saying, Go.
- The Expiration, stanza 1

Ah cannot we
As well as cocks and lions jocund be,
After such pleasures?
- Farewell to Love, stanza 3

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
- The Flea, line 1

A naked thinking heart, that makes no show,
Is to a woman, but a kind of ghost.
- The Blossom, line 27

Dear love, for nothing less than thee
Would I have broke this happy dream,
It was a theme
For reason, much too strong for fantasy,
Therefore thou waked’st me wisely; yet
My dream thou brok’st not, but continued’st it.
- The Dream

Stand still, and I will read to thee
A lecture, love, in love’s philosophy.
- A Lecture in the Shadow

If yet I have not all thy love,
Dear, I shall never have it all.
- Lovers’ Infiniteness

Now thou hast loved me one whole day,
To-morrow when thou leavest, what wilt thou say?
- Woman's Constancy, line 1

For having purposed change and falsehood, you
Can have no way but falsehood to be true!
Vain lunatic, against these 'scapes I could
Dispute, and conquer, if I would.
- Woman's Constancy, line 12

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
- The Good-Morrow

Epithamalions, or Marriage Songs

Up, up, fair bride, and call
Thy stars from out their several boxes, take
Thy rubies, pearls, and diamonds forth, and make
Thyself a constellation of them all.
- No. 3

Elegies

Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
- No. 2, The Anagram, line 27

Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love.
- No. 7, Nature's Lay Idiot, line 1

Are not your kisses then as filthy, and more,
As a worm sucking an envenom'd sore?
Doth not thy fearful hand in feeling quake,
As one which gathering flowers still fears a snake?
Is not your last act harsh and violent,
As when a plough a stony ground doth rent?
- No. 8, The Comparison, line 43

She, and comparisons are odious.
- No. 8, The Comparison, line 54. Compare: "Comparisons are odious", John Fortescue, De Laudibus Leg. Angliæ, Chap. xix; "Comparisons are odorous", Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, act iii, scene v

No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace,
As I have seen in one autumnal face.
- No. 9, The Autumnal, line 1

So, if I dream I have you, I have you,
For, all our joys are but fantastical.
- No. 10, The Dream, line 13

Fill'd with her love, may I be rather grown
Mad with much heart, than idiot with none.
- No. 10, The Dream, line 25

Great sorrows cannot speak.
- No. 11, Death, line 2

I will not look upon the quickening sun,
But straight her beauty to my sense shall run;
The air shall note her soft, the fire, most pure;
Waters suggest her clear, and the earth sure.
Time shall not lose our passages.
- No. 13, His Parting from Her

The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I
Abjure my so much loved variety.
- No. 17, Variety, line 1

By our first strange and fatal interview,
By all desires which thereof did ensue.
- No. 17, On His Mistress, line 1

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.
- No. 17, On His Mistress, line 52

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.
- No. 18, Love's Progress, line 1

The straight Hellespont between
The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts
Not of two lovers, but two loves the nests.
- No. 18, Love's Progress, line 60

Come, madam, come, all rest my powers defy;
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe ofttimes, having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing, though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven’s zone glittering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breast-plate, which you wear,
That th’ eyes of busy fools may be stopp’d there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime
Tells me from you that now it is bed-time.
- No. 19, To His Mistress Going to Bed, line 1. Not in Poems (1633) but in The Harmony of the Muses (1654)

We easily know
By this these angels from an evil sprite,
They set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
- No. 19, To His Mistress Going to Bed, line 22. Variant: "Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright."

Licence my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O, my America, my Newfoundland
My kingdom, safest when with one man mann'd,
My mine of precious stones, my empery;
How am I blest in thus discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then, where my hand is set, my soul shall be.
- No. 19, To His Mistress Going to Bed, line 25

Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be,
To taste whole joys.
- No. 19, To His Mistress Going to Bed, line 33

Holy Sonnets

I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements, and an angelic sprite.
- No. 5, line 1

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.
- No. 7, line 1

All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance, hath slain.
- No. 7, line 6

If poisonous minerals, and if that tree,
Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious
Cannot be damned; alas; why should I be?
- No. 9, line 1

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.
- No. 10, line 1

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.
- No. 10, line 9

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
- No. 10, line 13

What if this present were the world's last night?
- No. 13, line 1

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend.
- No. 14, line 1

Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthral me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
- No. 14, line 12

Show me, dear Christ, Thy spouse, so bright and clear.
- No. 18, line 1

Satires

Shall I leave all this constant company,
And follow headlong, wild uncertain thee?
- No. 1

For if one eat my meat, though it be known
The meat was mine, th'excrement is his own.
- No. 2

Kind pity chokes my spleen.
- No. 3 (c. 1598)

Though Truth and Falsehood be
Near twins, yet Truth a little elder is.
- No. 3

On a huge hill,
Cragged and steep, Truth stands,
and hee that will Reach her, about must, and about must goe;
And what the hills suddenness resists, winne so;
Yet strive so, that before age, deaths twilight, Thy Soule rest,
for none can worke in that night.
- No. 3

Epigrams

If in his study he hath so much care
To hang all old strange things, let his wife beware.
- Antiquary

Thy flattering picture, Phryne, is like thee,
Only in this, that you both painted be.
- Phryne

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

Main article: Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

Variable, and therefore miserable condition of man; this minute I was well, and am ill, this minute.
- I. Insultus Morbi Primus. The first alteration, the first grudging of the sickness.

Man, who is the noblest part of the earth, melts so away as if he were a statue, not of earth, but of snow.
- II. Actio Læsa. The strength, and the functions of the senses, and other faculties change and fail.

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.
- IV. Medicusque vocatur. The physician is sent for.

Enlarge this meditation upon this great world, man, so far, as to consider the immensity of the creatures this world produces; our creatures are our thoughts, creatures that are born giants; that reach from east to west, from earth to heaven, that do not only bestride all the sea and land, but span the sun and firmament at once; my thoughts reach all, comprehend all. Inexplicable mystery; I their creator am in a close prison, in a sick bed, anywhere, and any one of my creatures, my thoughts, is with the sun, and beyond the sun, overtakes the sun, and overgoes the sun in one pace, one step, everywhere.
- IV. Medicusque vocatur. The physician is sent for.

And then as the other world produces serpents, and vipers, malignant, and venomous creatures, and worms, and caterpillars, that endeavour to devour that world produces them, and monsters compiled and complicated of diverse parents, and kinds, so this world, ourselves produces all these in us, in producing diseases and sicknesses of all those sorts; venomous and infectious diseases, feeding and consuming diseases...
- IV. Medicusque vocatur. The physician is sent for.

I observe the physician, with the same diligence, as he the disease; I see he fears, and I fear with him...
- VI. Metuit. The physician is afraid.

A man that is not afraid of a Lion is afraid of a Cat; not afraid of starving, and yet is afraid of some joint of meat at the table, presented to feed him; not afraid of the sound of drums, and trumpets, and shot, and those, which they seek to drown, the last cries of men, and is afraid of some particular harmonious instrument; so much afraid, as that with any of these the enemy might drive this man, otherwise valiant enough, out of the field.
- VI. Metuit. The physician is afraid.

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.
- VI. Metuit. The physician is afraid.

Age is a sickness, and Youth is an ambush.
- Meditation 7

Let not one bring Learning, another Diligence, another Religion, but every one bring all.
- Meditation 7

The flea, though he kill none, he does all the harm he can.
- Meditation 12

But I do nothing upon my self, and yet I am mine own Executioner.
- Meditation 12. Variant: "I do nothing upon myself, and yet am mine own executioner."

He drinks misery, and he tastes happiness; he mows misery, and he gleaned happiness; he journeys in misery, he does but walked in happiness.
- Meditation 13

How deep do we dig, and for how coarse gold?
- Meditation 13

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.
- Meditation 17. This was the source for the title of Hemingway's novel. Original text: "No man is an Iland intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee."—M. Wilson, "No Man is an Island", International Review of Mission, 56 (1967), pp. 344-354

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.
- Expostulation 19

LXXX Sermons (1640)

Main article: LXXX Sermons

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.
- No. 15, preached at Whitehall, 8 March 1621

What gnashing is not a comfort, what gnawing of the worm is not a tickling, what torment is not a marriage bed to this damnation, to be secluded eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight of God?
- No. 76, preached to the Earl of Carlisle, c. autumn 1622

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.
- No. 76, preached at Sion to The Earl of Carlisle and company (c. 1622)

Now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.
- No. 3, preached on Christmas Day 1625

A day that hath no pridie, nor postridie, yesterday doth not usher it in, nor tomorrow shall not drive it out. Methusalem, with all his hundreds of years, was but a mushroom of a night’s growth, to this day, And all the four Monarchies, with all their thousands of years, and all the powerful Kings and all the beautiful Queens of this world, were but as a bed of flowers, some gathered at six, some at seven, some at eight, All in one Morning, in respect of this Day.
- No. 73, preached at Whitehall, 18 April 1626

I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in and invite God and his angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.
- No. 80, preached at the funeral of Sir William Cokayne, 12 December 1626

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.
- No. 80, preached at the funeral of Sir William Cokayne, 12 December 1626

There is nothing that God hath established in a constant course of nature, and which therefore is done every day, but would seem a Miracle, and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once.
- No. 22, preached on Easter Day 1627

Man is but earth; ’Tis true; but earth is the centre. That man who dwells upon himself, who is always conversant in himself, rests in his true centre.
- No. 5, preached on Christmas Day 1627

And what is so intricate, so entangling as death? Who ever got out of a winding sheet?
- No. 54, preached to the King at Whitehall, 5 April 1628

Poor intricated soul! Riddling, perplexed, labyrinthian soul!
- No. 48, preached upon the Day of St. Paul's Conversion, 25 January 1628/9

XXVI Sermons (1661)

They shall awake as Jacob did, and say as Jacob said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and this is no other but the house of God, and the gate of heaven, And into that gate they shall enter, and in that house they shall dwell, where there shall be no Cloud nor Sun, no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light, no noise nor silence, but one equal music, no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession, no foes nor friends, but one equal communion and identity, no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity.
- No. 15, 29 February 1627/8

When my mouth shall be filled with dust, and the worm shall feed, and feed sweetly upon me, when the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction if the poorest alive tread upon him, nor the poorest receive any contentment in being made equal to princes, for they shall be equal but in dust.
- No. 26, Death's Duel, last sermon, 15 February 1631

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.
- No. 26, Death's Duel

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.
- No. 26, Death's Duel

There we leave you, in that blessed dependancy, to hang upon him that hangs upon the Cross, there bathe in his tears, there suck at his wounds, and lie down in peace in his grave, till he vouchsafe you a resurrection, and an ascension into that Kingdom, which he hath prepared for you, with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood. Amen
- No. 26, Death's Duel

Attributed

He was the Word, that spake it:
He took the bread and brake it;
And what that Word did make it,
I do believe and take it.
- Divine Poems, "On the Sacrament"; attributed by many writers to Elizabeth I. It is not in the original edition of Donne, but first appears in the edition of 1654, p. 352

Absence, hear thou my protestation
Against thy strength,
Distance, and length;
Do what thou canst for alteration
- Present in Absence (That Time and Absence proves Rather helps than hurts to loves). Attributed to Donne in Q's Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250–1900 (1919), no. 197. Attribution likely but not proven ^{[citation needed]}

Oh, for some
Not to be martyred is a martyrdom.
- Reported in John F. Boyes, Lacon in Council (London: Bell and Daldy, 1865), p. 68

Despair...is the damp of hell; rejoicing is the serenity of heaven.
- Reported in Edwin P. Whipple, "Intellectual Character", in The Atlantic Monthly (May 1858), p. 800; reprinted in Character and Characteristic Men (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1866), p. 94

To worthiest things, virtue, art, beauty, fortune, now I see, rareness of use, not nature value brings.
- Reported in C. N. Douglas, ed., Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical (1917)

Quotes about Donne

The Muses’ garden with pedantic weeds
O’erspread, was purged by thee; the lazy seeds
Of servile imitation thrown away,
And fresh invention planted.
- Thomas Carew, An Elegy upon the Death of...Dr. John Donne (c. 1631) )

Here lies a king, that ruled as he thought fit
The universal monarchy of wit.
- Thomas Carew, An Elegy upon the Death of...Dr. John Donne (c. 1631)

With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,
Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots;
Rhyme’s sturdy cripple, fancy’s maze and clue,
Wit’s forge and fire-blast, meaning’s press and screw.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, On Donne’s Poetry (c. 1818)

To read Dryden, Pope, &c., you need only count syllables; but to read Donne you must measure time, and discover the time of each word by the sense of passion.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Notes on Donne's Poems" in Notes, Theological, Political, and Miscellaneous, ed. Derwent Coleridge (1853), p. 249

I have heard it said, by the way, that Donne's intolerable defect of ear grew out of his own baptismal name, when harnessed to his own surname -- John Donne. No man, it was said, who had listened to this hideous jingle from childish years, could fail to have his genius for discord, and the abominable in sound, improved to the utmost.
- Thomas De Quincey, Literary Reminiscences: From The Autobiography of an English Opium-eater (1851)

Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,
He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
- T. S. Eliot, "Whispers of Immortality", stanzas 3 and 4 (1919)

His writings, like his actions, were faulty, violent, a little morbid even, and abnormal. He was not, and did not attempt to be, an average man. But actions and writings alike, in their strangeness and aloofness, were unadulterated by a tinge of affectation.
- Edmund Gosse, The Life and Letters of John Donne (1899)

Donne is the most inharmonious of our versifiers, if he can be said to have deserved such a name by lines too rugged to seem metre. Of his earlier poems many are very licentious; the later are chiefly devout. Few are good for much; the conceits have not even the merit of being intelligible; it would perhaps be difficult to select three passages that we should care to read again.
- Henry Hallam, Introduction to the Literature of Europe (1864)

Donne, more than any other of his lifetime, understood that flair is its own kind of truth: if you want to make your point, make it so vivid and strange that it cuts straight throughyour interlocutor's complacent attention. To read his verse is to hear him insist, across the gap of hundreds of years: for God's sake, will you listen.
- Katherine Rundell^{[citation needed]}

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