Quotes from John Donne

I need thy thunder, O my God; thy music will not serve me.

And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, The Element of fire is quite put out; The Sun is lost, and th'earth, and no mans wit Can well direct him where to looke for it ... 'Tis all in peeces, all coherence gone; All just supply, and all Relation.

Thy breath in the congregation, thy word in the church, breathes communion and consolation here, and consummation hereafter;

Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown; Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one. My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest; Where can we find two better hemispheres Without sharp north, without declining west?

And, O my God, who madest thyself a light in a bush, in the midst of these brambles and thorns of a sharp sickness, appear unto me so that I may see thee, and know thee to be my God, applying thyself to me, even in these sharp and thorny passages.

Yet though these ways be lost, thou hast left one, Which is, immoderate grief that she is gone. But we may 'scape that sin, yet weep as much; Our tears are due because we are not such. Some tears, that knot of friends, her death must cost, Because the chain is broke, but no link lost.

We die and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love.

No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each 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 thine own Or of thine friend's were. Each man's death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.

Change is the nursery Of musicke, joy, life, and eternity. (Elegie III: Change)

My God, my God, I find in thy book that fear is a stifling spirit, a spirit of suffocation; that Ishbosheth could not speak, nor reply in his own defence to Abner, because he was afraid.

So well hast thou provided that we should always fear thee, as that thou hast provided that we should fear no person but thee, nothing but thee; no men? No. Whom? The Lord is my help and my salvation, whom shall I fear? [74] Great enemies? Not great enemies, for no enemies are great to them that fear thee.

Give me tender and supple and conformable affections, that as I joy with them that joy, and mourn with them that mourn, so I may fear with them that fear.