John Donne Quotes

Quotes about:

• Great sorrows cannot speak.

  John Donne

  Sorrow, Speak

  John Donne, Izaak Walton (1855). “The Poetical Works of Dr. John Donne: With a Memoir”, p.144

  6 Copy quote

• 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 as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

  John Donne

  Inspirational, Friendship, Death

  Devotions upon Emergent Occasions no. 17 (1624)

  77 Copy quote

• Sleep with clean hands, either kept clean all day by integrity or washed clean at night by repentance.

  John Donne

  Integrity, Sleep, Night

  John Donne (1839). “The Works of John Donne, D.D., Dean of Saint Paul's, 1621-1631: With a Memoir of His Life”, p.218

  27 Copy quote

• Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes.

  John Donne

  Wisdom, Political, Equal

  'LXXX Sermons' (1640) 8 March 1621/2

  70 Copy quote

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

  John Donne

  Motivational, Jail, World

  'To Sir Henry Wotton' (1597-8)

  37 Copy quote
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  No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.

  John Donne

  Beauty, Summer, Spring

  'Elegies' 'The Autumnal' (1599-1601)

  129 Copy quote

• Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfil
  All offices of death, except to kill.

  John Donne

  Pain, Sleep, Office

  "John Donne: The Major Works".

  7 Copy quote
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  No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.

  John Donne

  Teamwork, Men, Grieving

  Devotions upon Emergent Occasions no. 17 (1624)

  77 Copy quote

• we give each other a smile with a future in it

  John Donne

  Giving

  33 Copy quote

• Young men mend not their sight by using old men's spectacles.

  John Donne

  Men, Sight, Young

  1626 Sermon preached at the funeral of Sir William Cockayne, 12 Dec.

  8 Copy quote

• As he that fears God fears nothing else, so he that sees God sees everything else.

  John Donne

  Friendship, God, Faith

  John Donne (1839). “Sermons”, p.238

  13 Copy quote

• ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee

  John Donne

  Death, Grief, Bereavement

  John Donne, “No Man Is An Island”

  46 Copy quote

• More than kisses, letters mingle souls.

  John Donne

  Love, Romantic, Kissing

  'To Sir Henry Wotton' (1597-8)

  50 Copy quote

• Festive alcohol sometimes leads to an excess of honesty.

  John Donne

  Truth, Honesty, Alcohol

  7 Copy quote

• 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 therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

  John Donne

  Book, Men, Islands

  1624 Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation no.17.

  18 Copy quote

• I shall not live 'till I see God; and when I have seen Him, I shall never die.

  John Donne

  Heavenly, Dies

  John Donne (1839). “Sermons”, p.238

  12 Copy quote

• I sing the progress of a deathless soul.

  John Donne

  Soul, Progress, Deathless

  'The Progress of the Soul' (1601) st. 1

  6 Copy quote

• Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.

  John Donne

  Humiliation, Sanctification

  John Donne (2003). “One Equall Light: An Anthology of the Writings of John Donne”, p.267, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

  15 Copy quote

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

  John Donne

  Love, Two, Fool

  'Songs and Sonnets' 'The Triple Fool'

  23 Copy quote

• I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease.

  John Donne

  Funny, Humorous, Health

  John Donne, Henry Alford (1839). “The works of John Donne: Dean of Saint Paul's, 1621-1631”, p.518

  9 Copy quote

• O Lord, never suffer us to think that we can stand by ourselves, and not need thee.

  John Donne

  Thinking, Suffering, Needs

  27 Copy quote

• Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so. For, those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow. Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

  John Donne

  Death, Art, Thinking

  'Holy Sonnets' (1609) no. 6 (in J. Carey's edition, OUP, 1990)

  10 Copy quote

• The whole life of Christ was a continual Passion; others die martyrs but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for to his tenderness then the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after, and the manger as uneasy at first as his cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of one and the same day. And as even his birth is his death, so every action and passage that manifests Christ to us is his birth, for Epiphany is manifestation.

  John Donne

  Friday, Morning, Passion

  27 Copy quote

• One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

  John Donne

  Death, Sleep, Past

  Holy Sonnets no. 6 (1609)

  6 Copy quote

• Sleep is pain's easiest salve

  John Donne

  Pain, Sleep

  John Donne (1996). “Selected Poetry”, p.51, Oxford University Press, USA

  4 Copy quote

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