Quotes by John Donne

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

“Yet nothing can to nothing fall,Nor any place be empty quite;Therefore I think my breast hath allThose pieces still, though they be not unite;And now, as broken glasses showA hundred lesser faces, ...”

“Up then, fair phoenix bride, frustrate the sun;Thyself from thine affectionTakest warmth enough, and from thine eyeAll lesser birds will take their jollity.Up, up, fair bride, and callThy stars fro...”

“Nature hath no goal, though she hath law.”

“This is joy's bonfire, then, where love's strong artsMake of so noble individual partsOne fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts.”

“Twice or thrice had I lov'd thee, Before I knew thy face or name”

“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 a...”

“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 the...”

“Licence my roving hands, and let them go Before, behind, between, above, below.”

“My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares, And true plaine hearts doe in the faces rest, Where can we finde two better hemispheares Without sharpe North, without declining West? What ever dyes, ...”

“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. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are...”

“And to 'scape stormy days, I choose an everlasting night.”

“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.”

“Love's mysteries in souls do grow,But yet the body is his book.”

“If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.”

“How blest am I in this discovering thee!To enter in these bonds is to be free;Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be. Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth...”

“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.”

“At the round earth's imagined corners blowYour trumpets, angels, and arise, ariseFrom death, you numberless infinitiesOf souls, and to your scattered bodies go ;All whom the flood did, and fire sha...”

“Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,All just supply, and all relation;Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot,For every man alone thinks he hath gotTo be a phoenix, and that then can beNo...”

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