Quotes from John Donne

You are earth; he whom you tread upon is no less, and he that treads upon you is no more.

The World is a great Volume, and man the Index of that Booke; even in the Body of Man, you may turne to the whole world.

To adore, or scorne an image, or protest, May all be bad; doubt wisely, in strange way To stand inquiring right, is not to stray; To sleepe, or runne wrong, is: on a huge hill, Cragg'd, and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will Reach her, about must, and about must goe; And what the hills suddenes resists, winne so; Yet strive so, that before age, deaths twilight, Thy Soule rest, for none can worke in that night.

No man ever saw God and lived; and yet, I shall not live till I see God; and when I have seen him I shall never die

I sing the progress of a deathless soul, Whom Fate, which God made, but doth not control, Placed in most shapes; all times before the law Yoked us, and when, and since, in this I sing. And the great world to his aged evening, From infant morn, through manly noon I draw.

That this world's general sickness doth not lie In any humour, or one certain part; But as thou sawest it rotten at the heart, Thou seest a hectic fever hath got hold Of the whole substance, not to be controlled, And that thou hast but one way, not to admit The world's infection, to be none of it.

As yet God suspends me between heaven and earth, as a meteor; and I am not in heaven because an earthly body clogs me, and I am not in the earth because a heavenly soul sustains me.

The afflictions of the wicked exasperate them, enrage them, stone and pave them, obdurate and petrify them, but they do not crucify them. The afflictions of the godly crucify them. And when I am come to that conformity with my Saviour, as to fulfill his sufferings in my fiesh, (as I am, when I glorify him in a Christian constancy and cheerfulness in my afflictions) then I am crucified with him, carried up to his cross...

Though she were true when you met her. and last till you write your letter, Yet she Will be False, ere I come, to two, or three.

But think that we Are but turn'd aside to sleep; They who one another keep Alive, ne'er parted be.

That so all vapours of all disobedience to thee, being subdued under my feet, I may, in the power and triumph of thy Son, tread victoriously upon my grave, and trample upon the lion and dragon [182] that lie under it to devour me.

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 the other do.