Top 200 John Donne Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “No man is an island unto himself.”

— John Donne

2. “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.”

— John Donne

Featured in: Teamwork Quotes

3. “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

4. “Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes.”

— John Donne

5. “For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love.”

— John Donne

6. “Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.”

— John Donne

Featured in: Beauty Quotes

7. “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.”

— John Donne

8. “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

9. “No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.”

— John Donne

Featured in: Summer Quotes

10. “No man is an island, entire of itself.”

— John Donne

11. “Death, thou shalt die.”

— John Donne

12. “Death is an ascension to a better library.”

— John Donne

13. “In heaven it is always autumn.”

— John Donne

14. “Yesternight the sun went hence, And yet is here today.”

— John Donne

15. “As he that fears God fears nothing else, so he that sees God sees everything else.”

— John Donne

16. “When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.”

— John Donne

17. “As God loves a cheerful giver, so he also loves a cheerful taker. Who takes hold of his gifts with a glad heart.”

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

21. “For love all love of other sights controls and makes one little room an everywhere.”

— John Donne

22. “Be more than man, or thou’rt less than an ant.”

— John Donne

23. “Take me to you, imprison me, for I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free, nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.”

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

26. “Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.”

— John Donne

27. “Pleasure is none, if not diversified.”

— John Donne

28. “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.”

— John Donne

29. “I am a little world made cunningly.”

— John Donne

30. “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.”

— John Donne

31. “If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.”

— John Donne

32. “More than kisses, letters mingle souls.”

— John Donne

33. “I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease.”

— John Donne

34. “Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.”

— John Donne

35. “To be no part of any body, is to be nothing.”

— John Donne

36. “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.”

— John Donne

37. “To know and feel all this and not have the words to express it makes a human a grave of his own thoughts.”

— John Donne

38. “For I am every dead thing In whom love wrought new alchemy For his art did express A quintessence even from nothingness, From dull privations, and lean emptiness He ruined me, and I am re-begot Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not.”

— John Donne

39. “Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, With silken lines, and silver hooks.”

— John Donne

40. “I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in, and invite God, and his Angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his Angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.”

— John Donne

41. “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.”

— John Donne

42. “All occasions invite His mercies, and all times are His seasons.”

— John Donne

43. “At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow your trumpets, angels.”

— John Donne

44. “I sing the progress of a deathless soul.”

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

46. “Great sorrows cannot speak.”

— John Donne

47. “Then love is sin, and let me sinful be.”

— John Donne

48. “Our two souls therefore which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat.”

— John Donne

49. “Who are a little wise the best fools be.”

— John Donne

50. “Busy old fool, unruly Sun, why dost thou thus through windows and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?”

— John Donne