John Donne
But think that we Are but turned aside to sleep.Collection: Sleep
In best understandings, sin began, Angels sinned first, then Devils, and then Man.Collection: Angel
True and false fears let us refrain, 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.Collection: Love
And swear No where Lives a woman true, and fair.Collection: Life
The difference between the reason of man and the instinct of the beast is this, that the beast does but know, but the man knows that he knows.Collection: Philosophy
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?Collection: Love
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 mix'd equally; If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.Collection: Love
A mathematical point is the most indivisble and unique thing which art can present.Collection: Art
We are all conceived in close prison; in our mothers wombs, we are close prisoners all; when we are born, we are born but to the liberty of the house; prisoners still, though within larger walls; and then all our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death.Collection: Mother
Doubt wisely; in strange way To stand inquiring right, is not to stray; To sleep, or run wrong, is.Collection: Running
The world is a great volume, and man the index of that book; even in the body of man, you may turn to the whole world.Collection: Book
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?Collection: Death
Contemplative and bookish men must of necessity be more quarrelsome than others, because they contend not about matter of fact, nor can determine their controversies by any certain witnesses, nor judges. But as long as they go towards peace, that is Truth, it is no matter which way.Collection: Peace
All our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death.Collection: Life And Death
This Extasie doth unperplex (We said) and tell us what we love, Wee see by this, it was not sexe, Wee see, we saw not what did move: But as all severall soules contain Mixture of things, they know not what, Love, these mixt souls, doth mixe againe. Loves mysteries in soules doe grow, But yet the body is his booke.Collection: Love
If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two, Thy soul the fixt foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do.Collection: Moving
Oh do not die, for I shall hate All women so, when thou art gone.Collection: Art
And when a whirl-winde hath blowne the dust of the Churchyard into the Church, and man sweeps out the dust of the Church into the Church-yard, 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 Plebian bran.Collection: Flower
Other men's crosses are not my crosses.Collection: Men
Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie Flat on this bed.Collection: Love
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?Collection: Marriage
The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I Abjure my so much loved variety.Collection: Love
For love all love of other sights controls and makes one little room an everywhereCollection: Educational
Full nakedness! All my joys are due to thee, as souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, to taste whole joys.Collection: Joy
Nothing but man of all envenomed things, doth work upon itself, with inborn stings.Collection: Men
Thy face is mine eye, and mine is thine.Collection: Friendship
Our critical day is not the very day of our death; but the whole course of our life.Collection: Life
Death, thou shalt die.Collection: Dies
Take me to you, imprison me, for I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free, nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.Collection: Infatuation
This only is charity, to do all, all that we can.Collection: Kindness
I am a little world made cunningly.Collection: World
. . . Change is the nursery Of musicke, joy, life and eternity.Collection: Life
Without outward declarations, who can conclude an inward love?Collection: Love
To know and feel all this and not have the words to express it makes a human a grave of his own thoughts.Collection: Graves
Christ beats his drum, but he does not press men; Christ is served with voluntaries.Collection: Christian
Licence my roving hands, and let them go Before, behind, between, above, below.Collection: Sex
Man is not only a contributory creature, but a total creature; he does not only make one, but he is all; he is not a piece of the world, but the world itself, and next to the glory of God, the reason why there is a world.Collection: Men
There is hook in every benefit, that sticks in his jaws that takes that benefit, and draws him whither the benefactor will.Collection: Sticks
In heaven it is always autumn.Collection: Autumn
Young men mend not their sight by using old men's spectacles.Collection: Men
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.Collection: God
Eternity is not an everlasting flux of time, but time is as a short parenthesis in a long period.Collection: Time
Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven.Collection: Joy
In the first minute that my soul is infused, the Image of God is imprinted in my soul; so forward is God in my behalf, and so early does he visit me.Collection: Soul
Solitude is a torment which is not threatened in hell itself.Collection: Solitude
The distance from nothing to a little, is ten thousand times more, than from it to the highest degree in this life.Collection: Distance
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 feign'd deaths to die.Collection: Love
How great love is, presence best trial makes, But absence tries how long this love will be.Collection: Love Is
We love and understand talent; we wish it be within us. The truly gifted, those exceptional few, must wait for the world to catch up.Collection: Waiting