John Donne

That which we call life, is but hebdomada mortium, a week of death, seven days, seven periods of our life spent in dying, a dying seven times over; and there is an end.

We have a winding sheet in our mother’s womb, which grows with us from our conception, and we come into the world, wound up in that winding sheet, for we come to seek a grave.

When my mouth shall be filled with dust, and the worm shall feed, and feed sweetly upon me, when the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction if the poorest alive tread upon him, nor the poorest receive any contentment in being made equal …

And what is so intricate, so entangling as death? Who ever got out of a winding sheet?

Man is but earth; ’Tis true; but earth is the centre. That man who dwells upon himself, who is always conversant in himself, rests in his true centre.

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.

A memory of yesterday’s pleasures, a fear of tomorrow’s dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayer. So certainly is there …

I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in and invite God and his angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.

Now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times …

When God's hand is bent to strike, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God; but to fall out of the hands of the living God is a horror beyond our expression, beyond our imagination.

What gnashing is not a comfort, what gnawing of the worm is not a tickling, what torment is not a marriage bed to this damnation, to be secluded eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight of God?

My God, my God, thou art a direct God, may I not say a literal God, a God that wouldst be understood literally and according to the plain sense of all that thou sayest? But thou art also...a figurative, a metaphorical God too.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man 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 thy friends or of thine …

How deep do we dig, and for how coarse gold?

He drinks misery, and he tastes happiness; he mows misery, and he gleaned happiness; he journeys in misery, he does but walked in happiness.

But I do nothing upon my self, and yet I am mine own Executioner.

The flea, though he kill none, he does all the harm he can.

Let not one bring Learning, another Diligence, another Religion, but every one bring all.

Age is a sickness, and Youth is an ambush.

I know not what fear is, nor I know not what it is that I fear now; I fear not the hastening of my death, and yet I do fear the increase of the disease... my weakness is from nature, who hath but her measure, my strength is from God, who …

I observe the physician, with the same diligence, as he the disease; I see he fears, and I fear with him...

It is too little to call man a little world, except God, man is a diminutive to nothing. Man consists of more pieces, more parts, than the world; than the world doth, nay, than the world is.

Man, who is the noblest part of the earth, melts so away as if he were a statue, not of earth, but of snow.

Variable, and therefore miserable condition of man; this minute I was well, and am ill, this minute.