John Donne Death Quotations

Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so. For, those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow. Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

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

ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

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 friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.

God himself took a day to rest in, and a good man's grave is his Sabbath.

All our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death.

I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him merely seize me, and only declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwreck, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotency might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.

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.

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.