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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Donne

  • Busy old fool, unruly sun,
  • Why dost thou thus,
  • Through windows and through curtains call on us?
  • For good or evil must in our actions meet;
  • Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.
  • We understood
  • Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood
  • Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,
  • That one might almost say her body thought.
  • Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes. The ashes of an oak in a chimney are no epitaph of that, to tell me how high or how large that was; it tells me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell. The dust of great persons’ graves is speechless, too; it says nothing, it distinguishes nothing.

    Despair is the damp of hell; rejoicing is the serenity of heaven.

    For some not to be martyred is a martyrdom.

    Friends are ourselves.

    Great sorrows cannot speak.

    Sleep is pain’s easiest salve, and doth fulfill all offices of death, except to kill.

    The eloquent blood spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, you might have almost said her body thought.

    The maskers come late, and I think will stay, like fairies, till the cock crow them away.

    There is no health; physicians say that we, at best, enjoy but neutrality.

    To roam giddily, and be everywhere but at home, such freedom doth a banishment become.

    To worthiest things, virtue, art, beauty, fortune, now I see, rareness of use, not nature value brings.

    Up, up, fair bride! and call thy stars from out their several boxes; take thy rubies, pearls, and diamonds forth, and make thyself a constellation of them all.

    Virtue hath some perverseness, for she will neither believe her good nor other’s ill.

    Who are a little wise the best fools be.

    Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.