Top 200 John Donne Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “This only is charity, to do all, all that we can.”

— John Donne

152. “Nature hath no goal though she hath law.”

— John Donne

153. “Yet nothing can to nothing fall, Nor any place be empty quite; Therefore I think my breast hath all Those pieces still, though they be not unite; And now, as broken glasses show A hundred lesser faces, so My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore, But after one such love, can love no more.”

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

156. “Verse hath a middle nature: heaven keeps souls, The grave keeps bodies, verse the fame enrols.”

— John Donne

157. “Chastity is not chastity in an old man, but a disability to be unchaste.”

— John Donne

158. “And what is so intricate, so entangling as death? Who ever got out of a winding sheet?”

— John Donne

159. “Thy face is mine eye, and mine is thine.”

— John Donne

160. “There is in every miracle a silent chiding of the world, and a tacit reprehension of them who require, or who need miracles.”

— John Donne

161. “But he who loveliness within Hath found, all outward loathes, For he who color loves, and skin, Loves but their oldest clothes.”

— John Donne

162. “If I lose at play, I blaspheme; if my fellow loses, he blasphemes. So, God is always the loser.”

— John Donne

163. “Lust-bred diseases rot thee.”

— John Donne

164. “I am the dust and the ashes of the temple of the Holy Ghost, and what marble is so precious? But I am more than dust and ashes: I am my best part, I am my soul.”

— John Donne

165. “As soon as there was two there was pride.”

— John Donne

166. “Between cowardice and despair, valour is gendred.”

— John Donne

167. “Sleep is pain’s easiest salve.”

— John Donne

168. “Who knows his virtues name or place, hath none.”

— John Donne

169. “Twice or thrice had I loved thee before I knew thy face or name, so in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, angels affect us oft, and worshiped be.”

— John Donne

170. “How imperfect is all our knowledge!”

— John Donne

171. “That thou remember them, some claim as debt; I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.”

— John Donne

172. “True joy is the earnest which we have of heaven, it is the treasure of the soul, and therefore should be laid in a safe place, and nothing in this world is safe to place it in.”

— John Donne

173. “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.”

— John Donne

174. “And dare love that, and say so too, And forget the He and She.”

— John Donne

175. “The distance from nothing to a little, is ten thousand times more, than from it to the highest degree in this life.”

— John Donne

176. “Doth not a man die even in his birth? The breaking of prison is death, and what is our birth, but a breaking of prison?”

— John Donne

177. “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.”

— John Donne

178. “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.”

— John Donne

179. “Thou, sun, art half as happy as we.”

— John Donne

180. “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.”

— John Donne

181. “Without outward declarations, who can conclude an inward love?”

— John Donne

182. “My world’s both parts, and ’o! Both parts must die.”

— John Donne

183. “Of all the commentaries on the Scriptures, good examples are the best.”

— John Donne

184. “Oft from new truths, and new phrase, new doubts grow, As strange attire aliens the men we know.”

— John Donne

185. “I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call and invite God and his angels thither...”

— John Donne

186. “I joy, that in these straits I see my west;.”

— John Donne

187. “Christ beats his drum, but he does not press men; Christ is served with voluntaries.”

— John Donne

188. “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!”

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

190. “All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, Despair, law, chance, hath slain.”

— John Donne

191. “The Psalms foretell what I, what any shall do and suffer and say.”

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

194. “Great sins are great possessions; but levities and vanities possess us too; and men had rather part with Christ than with any possession.”

— John Donne

195. “Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me.”

— John Donne

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

— John Donne

197. “Enjoyment always has a spoiling, otherwise it cannot be so.”

— John Donne

198. “I think it mercy if Thou wilt forget.”

— John Donne

199. “We love and understand talent; we wish it be within us. The truly gifted, those exceptional few, must wait for the world to catch up.”

— John Donne

200. “Contemplative and bookish men must of necessity be more quarrelsome than others, because neither do they contend about matters of fact nor can they determine their controversies by any certain witnesses or judges.”

— John Donne