John Donne
Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing.Collection: Great
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.Collection: Beauty
Reason is our soul's left hand, faith her right.Collection: Faith
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.Collection: Death
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.Collection: Death
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.Collection: Time
Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.Collection: Motivational
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.Collection: Sad
More than kisses, letters mingle souls.Collection: Love
God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice.Collection: Age
For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love.Collection: Love
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space.Collection: Space
No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.Collection: Beauty
I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so in whining poetry.Collection: Poetry
Sleep with clean hands, either kept clean all day by integrity or washed clean at night by repentance.Collection: Integrity
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.Collection: Inspirational
Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes.Collection: Wisdom
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.Collection: Teamwork
All mankind is one volume. When one man dies, a chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language. And every chapter must be translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice. But God's hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall live open to one anotherCollection: Life
I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease.Collection: Funny
One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.Collection: Death
we give each other a smile with a future in itCollection: Giving
As he that fears God fears nothing else, so he that sees God sees everything else.Collection: Friendship
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.Collection: Book
ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for theeCollection: Death
Festive alcohol sometimes leads to an excess of honesty.Collection: Truth
O Lord, never suffer us to think that we can stand by ourselves, and not need thee.Collection: Thinking
I shall not live 'till I see God; and when I have seen Him, I shall never die.Collection: Heavenly
Be more than man, or thou'rt less than an ant.Collection: Men
Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.Collection: Humiliation
Death is an ascension to a better library.Collection: Library
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.Collection: Friday
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.Collection: Love
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we lov'd?Collection: Love
I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so.Collection: Love
Oft from new truths, and new phrase, new doubts grow, As strange attire aliens the men we know.Collection: Men
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?Collection: Art
Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.Collection: Men
And new philosophy calls all in doubt, The element of fire is quite put out; The sun is lost, and the earth, and no man's wit Can well direct him where to look for it. And freely men confess that this world's spent, When in the planets, and the firmament They seek so many new; then see that this Is crumbled out again to his atomies. 'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone; All just supply, and all relation: Prince, subject, Father, Son, are things forgot.Collection: Father
Great sins are great possessions; but levities and vanities possess us too; and men had rather part with Christ than with any possession.Collection: Men
I did best when I had least truth for my subjects.Collection: Subjects
My world's both parts, and 'o! Both parts must die.Collection: World
Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be? O wilt thou therefore rise from me? Why should we rise, because 'tis light? Did we lie down, because 'twas night? Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither Should in despite of light keep us together.Collection: Lying
Let not thy divining heart Forethink me any ill; Destiny may take thy part, And may thy fears fulfill.Collection: Heart
All Kings, and all their favorites, All glory of honors, beauties, wits, The sun itself, which makes times, as they pass, Is elder by a year, now, than it was When thou and I first one another saw: All other things, to their destruction draw, Only our love hath no decay; This, no tomorrow hash, nor yesterday, Running, it never runs from us away, But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.Collection: Running
Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification; and as without this, without holiness, no man shall see God, though he pore whole nights upon his Bible; so without that, without humility, no man shall hear God speak to his soul, though he hear three two-hour sermons every day.Collection: Humility
And if there be any addition to knowledge, it is rather a new knowledge than a greater knowledge; rather a singularity in a desire of proposing something that was not knownat all beforethananimproving, anadvancing, a multiplying of former inceptions; and by that means, no knowledge comes to be perfect.Collection: Mean
At the round earth's imagined corners, blow your trumpets, angels.Collection: Angel
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.Collection: Love
Commemoration of Richard Meux Benson, Founder of the Society of St John the Evangelist, 1915 Our critical day is not the very day of our death, but the whole course of our life; I thank him, that prays for me when my bell tolls; but I thank him much more, that catechizes me, or preaches to me, or instructs me how to live.Collection: Life