John Donne Quotes - Page 8

Our faults are not seen, But past us; neither felt, but only in The punishment.

Filled with her love, may I be rather grown Mad with much heart, than idiot with none.

How many times go we to comedies, to masques, to places of great and noble resort, nay even to church only to see the company.

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

Old grandsires talk of yesterday with sorrow, And for our children we reserve tomorrow.

Whoever 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.

To an incompetent judge I must not lie, but I may be silent; to a competent I must answer.

At most, the greatest persons are but great wens, and excrescences; men of wit and delightful conversation, but as morals for ornament, except they be so incorporated into the body of the world that they contribute something to the sustentation of the whole.

I neglect God and his angles for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.

Though truth and falsehood be Near twins, yet truth a little elder is.

Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it and made fit for God.

But think that we Are but turned aside to sleep.

In best understandings, sin began, Angels sinned first, then Devils, and then Man.

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.

And swear No where Lives a woman true, and fair.

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.

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?

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; Water suggest her clear, and the earth sure; Time shall not lose our passages.

I call not that virginity a virtue, which resideth onely in the bodies integrity; much less if it be with a purpose of perpetually keeping it: for then it is a most inhumane vice. - But I call that Virginity a virtue which is willing and desirous to yield it self upon honest and lawfull terms, when just reason requireth; and until then, is kept with a modest chastity of body and mind.

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.

Let man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this, The intelligence that moves, devotion is.

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.

Oh do not die, for I shall hate All women so, when thou art gone.

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's.

There is no health; physicians say that we, at best, enjoy but neutrality.