John Donne Love Quotations

Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Busy old fool, unruly Sun, why dost thou thus through windows and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?

Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.

For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love.

Let us love nobly, and live, and add again years and years unto years.

Let us love nobly, and live, and add again years and years unto years, till we attain to write threescore: this is the second of our reign.

Nurse, O my love is slain, I saw him go / O'er the white Alps alone.

Love is agrowing, to full constant light; and his first minute, after noon, is night.

My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore, but after one such love can love no more.

Rebel and Atheist too, why murmur I, / As though I felt the worst that love could do?

Twice or thrice had I loved thee, Before I knew thy face or name.

O, if thou car'st not whom I love alas, thou lov'st not me.

Sweetest love, I do not go, / For weariness of thee, / Nor in hope the world can show / A fitter Love for me; / But since that I / Must die at last, 'tis best / To use myself in jest, / Thus by feigned deaths to die.

I long to talk with some old lover's ghost, / Who died before the god of love was born.

Twice or thrice had I loved thee before I knew thy face or name, so in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, angels affect us oft, and worshiped be.

Love is a growing, or full constant light; And his first minute, after noon, is night.

How great love is, presence best trial makes, But absence tries how long this love will be.

Only our love hath no decay; this, no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday, running it never runs from us away, but truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

All other things to their destruction draw, Only our love hath no decay...

Without outward declarations, who can conclude an inward love?

Whoever loves, if he do not propose The right true end of love, he's one that goes To sea for nothing but to make him sick.

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.

True and false fears let us refrain, Let us love nobly, and live, and add again Years and years unto years, till we attain To write threescore ; this is the second of our reign.

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? Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally; If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I Abjure my so much loved variety.

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie Flat on this bed.

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.

Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love.

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.

I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I Did, till we loved? were we not weaned till then? But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den?

Sweetest love, I do not go, For weariness of thee, Nor in hope the world can show A fitter love for me; But since that I Must die at last, 'tis best, To use my self in jest Thus by feign'd deaths to die.

But he who loveliness within Hath found, all outward loathes, For he who color loves, and skin, Loves but their oldest clothes.

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.

And dare love that, and say so too, And forget the He and She.

Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it.

This Extasie doth unperplex (We said) and tell us what we love, Wee see by this, it was not sexe, Wee see, we saw not what did move: But as all severall soules contain Mixture of things, they know not what, Love, these mixt souls, doth mixe againe. Loves mysteries in soules doe grow, But yet the body is his booke.

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we lov'd?

More than kisses, letters mingle souls.

Love's mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book.

I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so.

Then love is sin, and let me sinful be.

...Whatever dies was not mixed equally, If our two loves be one Or thou and I love so alike That none can slacken, none can die.

Love is strong as death; but nothing else is as strong as either; and both, love and death, met in Christ. How strong and powerful upon you, then, should that instruction be, that comes to you from both these, the love and death of Jesus Christ!

I do not love a man, except I hate his vices, because those vices are the enemies, and the destruction of that friend whom I love.

I long to talk with some old lover's ghost, Who died before the god of love was born.

Love was as subtly caught, as a disease; But being got it is a treasure sweet, which to defend is harder than to get: And ought not be profaned on either part, for though 'Tis got by chance, 'Tis kept by art.

As God loves a cheerful giver, so he also loves a cheerful taker. Who takes hold of his gifts with a glad heart.