O how feeble is man's power, that if good fortune fall, cannot add another hour, nor a lost hour recall! John Donne More Quotes by John Donne More Quotes From John Donne Filled with her love, may I be rather grown Mad with much heart, than idiot with none. John Donne mad heart may 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. John Donne kings time running Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie Flat on this bed. John Donne bed love lying If we consider eternity, into that time never entered; eternity is not an everlasting flux of time, but time is as a short parenthesis in a long period; and eternity had been the same as it is, though time had never been. John Donne eternity time long 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 phoenix love sex The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I Abjure my so much loved variety. John Donne should love heaven And dare love that, and say so too, And forget the He and She. John Donne dare forget love Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love. John Donne taught nature love Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it. John Donne soul love dull God himself took a day to rest in, and a good man's grave is his Sabbath. John Donne good-man men death We can die by it, if not live by love, And if unfit for tombs and hearse Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; And if no peace of chronicle we prove, We'll build in sonnet pretty rooms; As well a well wrought urne becomes The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs. John Donne ashes love peace 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 feet two moving God is so omnipresent. . . . God is an angel in an angel, and a stone in a stone, and a straw in a straw. John Donne fairy angel stones 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. John Donne yield honesty integrity So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, Angels affect us often. John Donne flames voice angel Contemplative and bookish men must of necessity be more quarrelsome than others, because they contend not about matter of fact, nor can determine their controversies by any certain witnesses, nor judges. But as long as they go towards peace, that is Truth, it is no matter which way. John Donne men peace long There is nothing that God hath established in a constant course of nature, and which therefore is done every day, but would seem a Miracle, and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once. John Donne miracle done exercise 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 envy tree death We are all conceived in close prison; in our mothers wombs, we are close prisoners all; when we are born, we are born but to the liberty of the house; prisoners still, though within larger walls; and then all our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death. John Donne wall jail mother If I dream I have you, I have you, for all our joys are but fantastical. John Donne ifs dream joy
