John Donne Quotes - Page 3

If I dream I have you, I have you, for all our joys are but fantastical.

Goe and catche a falling starre, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me, where all past yeares are, Or who cleft the Divel's foot. Teach me to hear Mermaides' singing, Or to keep of envies stinging, And finde What winde Serves to advance an honest minde.

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

Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

Pleasure is none, if not diversified.

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.

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

Nature hath no goal though she hath law.

Who are a little wise the best fools be.

Friends are ourselves.

God made sun and moon to distinguish the seasons, and day and night; and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons. But God hath made no decrees to distinguish the seasons of His mercies. In Paradise the fruits were ripe the first minute, and in heaven it is always autumn. His mercies are ever in their maturity.

He that desires to print a book, should much more desire, to be a book.

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

If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

There is hook in every benefit, that sticks in his jaws that takes that benefit, and draws him whither the benefactor will.

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

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.

Thy face is mine eye, and mine is thine.

I shall die reading; since my book and a grave are so near.

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.

Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.

Between cowardice and despair, valour is gendred.

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

Love is strong as death; but nothing else is as strong as either; and both, love and death, met in Christ. How strong and powerful upon you, then, should that instruction be, that comes to you from both these, the love and death of Jesus Christ!