John Donne Quotes - Page 9

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 schoolboys, and sour prentices, Go tell court-huntsmen that the King will ride, Call countryants to harvest offices; Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss, Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away.

That which attempts to elevate the ugly to the level of beauty becomes neither; but an obscenity.

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie Flat on this bed.

Man hath weaved out a net, and this net throwne upon the Heavens, and now they are his own.

The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I Abjure my so much loved variety.

At the round earth's imagined corners, blow Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise From death, you numberless infinities Of souls **** All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, Despair, law, chance, hath slain.

Men have conceived a twofold use of sleep; it is a refreshing of the body in this life, and a preparing of the soul for the next.

As peace is of all goodness, so war is an emblem, a hieroglyphic, of all misery.

He must pull out his own eyes, and see no creature, before he can say, he sees no God; He must be no man, and quench his reasonable soul, before he can say to himself, there is no God.

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.

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.

All our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death.

I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him merely seize me, and only declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwreck, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotency might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.

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.

Between these two, the denying of sins, which we have done, and the bragging of sins, which we have not done, what a space, what a compass is there, for millions of millions of sins!

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.

But I do nothing upon myself, and yet I am my own executioner.

If every gnat that flies were an archangel, all that could but tell me that there is a God; and the poorest worm that creeps tells me that.

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.

Can there be worse sickness, than to know that we are never well, nor can be so?

A mathematical point is the most indivisble and unique thing which art can present.

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?

That soul that can reflect upon itself, consider itself, is more than so.

Doubt wisely; in strange way To stand inquiring right, is not to stray; To sleep, or run wrong, is.