John Donne
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.Collection: Two
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?Collection: Death
God affords no man the comfort, the false comfort of Atheism: He will not allow a pretending Atheist the power to flatter himself, so far, as to seriously think there is no God.Collection: Atheist
Men perish with whispering sins-nay, with silent sins, sins that never tell the conscience that they are sins, as often with crying sins; and in hell there shall meet as many men that never thought what was sin, as that spent all their thoughts in the compassing of sin.Collection: Men
Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.Collection: Wicked
To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend, All is the purlieu of the god of love.Collection: Writing
Now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.Collection: Time
The sun must not set upon anger, much less will I let the sun set upon the anger of God towards me.Collection: Christian
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. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth if th' other do. And though it in the center sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. Suth wilt thou be to me, who must Like th' other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I began.Collection: Running
Poetry is a counterfeit creation, and makes things that are not, as though they wereCollection: Creativity
Commemoration of Pandita Mary Ramabai, Translator of the Scriptures, 1922 A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a fear of tomorrow's dangers, a straw under my knees, a noise in my ear, a light in my eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayers.Collection: Prayer
As states subsist in part by keeping their weaknesses from being known, so is it the quiet of families to have their chancery and their parliament within doors, and to compose and determine all emergent differences there.Collection: Family
If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.Collection: Dream
All occasions invite His mercies, and all times are His seasons.Collection: Mercy
When my mouth shall be filled with dust, and the worm shall feed, and feed sweetly upon me, when the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction if the poorest alive tread upon him, nor the poorest receive any contentment in being made equal to princes, for they shall be equal but in dust.Collection: Men
And what is so intricate, so entangling as death? Who ever got out of a winding sheet?Collection: Death
Poor heretics there be,Which think to establish dangerous constancy,But I have told them, ‘Since you will be true,You shall be true to them, who are false to you.Collection: Thinking
I have done one braver thing than all the Worthies did, and yet a braver thence doth spring, which is, to keep that hid.Collection: Spring
Great sorrows cannot speak.Collection: Sorrow
Who knows his virtues name or place, hath none.Collection: Names
And dare love that, and say so too, And forget the He and She.Collection: Love
But I do nothing upon myself, and yet I am my own executioner.Collection: Executioners
So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss, Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away.Collection: Kissing
That subtle knot which makes us man So must pure lovers souls descend T affections, and to faculties, Which sense may reach and apprehend, Else a great Prince in prison lies.Collection: Lying
At the round earth's imagined corners, blow Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise From death, you numberless infinities Of souls **** All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, Despair, law, chance, hath slain.Collection: War
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.Collection: God
Can there be worse sickness, than to know that we are never well, nor can be so?Collection: Sickness
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!Collection: Two
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.Collection: Fall
Let man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this, The intelligence that moves, devotion is.Collection: Moving
There is no health; physicians say that we, at best, enjoy but neutrality.Collection: Health
As peace is of all goodness, so war is an emblem, a hieroglyphic, of all misery.Collection: War
That soul that can reflect upon itself, consider itself, is more than so.Collection: Soul
Enjoyment always has a spoiling, otherwise it cannot be so.Collection: Happiness
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.Collection: Life
Busy old fool, unruly sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains, call on us? Must to thy motions lovers'seasons run? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide Late schoolboys, and sour prentices, Go tell court-huntsmen that the King will ride, Call countryants to harvest offices; Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.Collection: Running
I call not that virginity a virtue, which resideth onely in the bodies integrity; much less if it be with a purpose of perpetually keeping it: for then it is a most inhumane vice. - But I call that Virginity a virtue which is willing and desirous to yield it self upon honest and lawfull terms, when just reason requireth; and until then, is kept with a modest chastity of body and mind.Collection: Honesty
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.Collection: God
'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's.Collection: Years
Man hath weaved out a net, and this net throwne upon the Heavens, and now they are his own.Collection: Men
Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Running
I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him merely seize me, and only declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwreck, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotency might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.Collection: Death
To a large degree, since the beginning of time, charisma or the lack of it has impacted upon those in quest of acclaim. As media expands, this has become ever more vital. Thus, demeanor if unappealing, can defeat one's likelihood of success, causing the death of prospects whilst they are still embryonic.Collection: Success
That which attempts to elevate the ugly to the level of beauty becomes neither; but an obscenity.Collection: Levels