Top 200 John Donne Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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

52. “Poetry is a counterfeit creation, and makes things that are not, as though they were.”

— John Donne

53. “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!”

— John Donne

54. “Nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing.”

— John Donne

55. “How great love is, presence best trial makes, But absence tries how long this love will be.”

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

57. “The day breaks not, it is my heart.”

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

59. “The Phoenix riddle hath more wit By us, we two being one, are it. So to one neutral thing both sexes fit, We die and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love.”

— John Donne

60. “If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two, Thy soul the fixt foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do.”

— John Donne

61. “Filled with her love, may I be rather grown Mad with much heart, then idiot with none.”

— John Donne

62. “I shall not live ’till I see God; and when I have seen Him, I shall never die.”

— John Donne

63. “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.”

— John Donne

64. “Solitude is a torment which is not threatened in hell itself.”

— John Donne

65. “I long to talk with some old lover’s ghost, Who died before the god of love was born.”

— John Donne

66. “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?”

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

68. “And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, the element of fire is quite put out; the Sun is lost, and the earth, and no mans wit can well direct him where to look for it.”

— John Donne

69. “Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.”

— John Donne

70. “Nothing but man of all envenomed things, doth work upon itself, with inborn stings.”

— John Donne

71. “From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure, then from thee much more, must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.”

— John Donne

72. “Let not thy divining heart Forethink me any ill; Destiny may take thy part, And may thy fears fulfill.”

— John Donne

73. “That our affections kill us not, nor dye.”

— John Donne

74. “Full nakedness! All my joys are due to thee, as souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, to taste whole joys.”

— John Donne

75. “Other men’s crosses are not my crosses.”

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

77. “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.”

— John Donne

78. “Commemoration of John Donne, Priest, Poet, 1631 He was the Word that spake it; He took the bread and brake it; And what that Word did make it I do believe, and take it.”

— John Donne

79. “God himself took a day to rest in, and a good man’s grave is his Sabbath.”

— John Donne

80. “To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend, All is the purlieu of the god of love.”

— John Donne

81. “As virtuous men pass mildly away, and whisper to their souls to go, whilst some of their sad friends do say, the breath goes now, and some say no.”

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

84. “The sun must not set upon anger, much less will I let the sun set upon the anger of God towards me.”

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

86. “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.”

— John Donne

87. “Young men mend not their sight by using old men’s spectacles.”

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

89. “I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we lov’d?”

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

91. “In the first minute that my soul is infused, the Image of God is imprinted in my soul; so forward is God in my behalf, and so early does he visit me.”

— John Donne

92. “I find no abhorring in my appetite.”

— John Donne

93. “First, I give my gracious God an entire sacrifice of body and soul, with my most humble thanks for that assurance which His Blessed Spirit imprints in me now of the Salvation of the one, and the Resurrection of the other;.”

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

95. “O how feeble is man’s power, that if good fortune fall, cannot add another hour, nor a lost hour recall!”

— John Donne

96. “Sweetest love, I do not go, For weariness of thee, Nor in hope the world can show A fitter love for me; But since that I Must die at last, ’tis best, To use my self in jest Thus by feign’d deaths to die.”

— John Donne

97. “Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy, or charms, can make us sleep as well, And better than thy stroke. Why swell’st thou then?”

— John Donne

98. “On a huge hill, Cragged, and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will Reach her, about must, and about must goo.”

— John Donne

99. “And who understands? Not me, because if I did I would forgive it all.”

— John Donne

100. “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.”

— John Donne