1. “Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.”
2. ”All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God emploies several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation; and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.”
3. “Any man's death diminishes me, becauseI am involved in Mankind;And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
4. "Be thine own palace, or the world's jail."
5. ”Busy old fool, unruly Sun,Why dost thou thus,Through windows and through curtains call on us?Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?Saucy pedantic wretch, go chideLate school-boys, and sour 'prentices,Go tell court-huntsmen that the King will ride,Call country ants to harvest offices;Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.”
6. “But I do nothing upon myself, and yetI am mine own Executioner.”
7. “But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space.”
8. “But O alas, so long, so far / Our bodies why do we forbear? / They're ours, though they're not we, we are / The intelligences, they the sphere.”
9. “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."
10. DEAR love, for nothing less than thee / Would I have broke this happy dream; / It was a theme / For reason, much too strong for fantasy. / Therefore thou waked’st me wisely; yet / My dream thou brak’st not, but continued’st it: / Thou art so true that thoughts of thee suffice / To make dreams truths and fables histories. / Enter these arms, for since thou thought’st it best / Not to dream all my dream, let’s act the rest.”
11. “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 overthrowDie not, poor death.”
12. “Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven.”
13. “Eternity is not an everlasting flux of time, but time is as a short parenthesis in a long period.”
14. “For God's sake hold yourtongue, and let me love.
For love, all love of other sights controls,And makes one little room, an everywhere.”
15. ”For I / Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, / Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.”
16. “Full nakedness! / All joyes are due to thee, / As souls unbodied, / Bodies uncloth'd must be / To taste whole joyes.”
17. “Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,Tell me where all past years are,Or who cleft the devil's foot,Teach me to hear mermaids singing,Or to keep off envy's stinging, And find What windServes to advance an honest mind.”
18. “God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice.”
19. ”Her pure and eloquent blood / Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, / That one might almost say, her body thought.”
20. ”I am a little world made cunningly / Of elements, and an angelic spright.”
21. ”I am two fools, I know, / For loving, and for saying so, / In whining Poetry.”
22. “IF yet I have not all thy love,Dear, I shall never have it all ;I cannot breathe one other sigh, to move,Nor can intreat one other tear to fall ;And all my treasure, which should purchase thee,Sighs, tears, and oaths, and letters I have spent ;Yet no more can be due to me,Than at the bargain made was meant.If then thy gift of love were partial,That some to me, some should to others fall,Dear, I shall never have thee all.
23. “If thou be'st born to strange sights,Things invisible to see,Ride ten thousand days and nights,Till age snow white hairs on thee,Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,All strange wonders that befell thee,And swear,No whereLives a woman true and fair.”
24. ” I LONG to talk with some old lover's ghost,Who died before the god of love was born.I cannot think that he, who then loved most,Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn.But since this god produced a destiny,And that vice-nature, custom, lets it be,I must love her that loves not me.”
25. ”I neglect God and his Angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.”
26. “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.”
27. ”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?”
28. “Let us love nobly, and live, and addagain years and years unto years, till we attain to write threescore: this is the second of our reign.”
29. "Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time."
30. "Love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere."
31. "Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies."
32. “Love is anterior to life, Posterior to death, Initial of creation, and The exponent of breath.”
33. “More than kisses, letters mingle souls.”
34. “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 can slacken, none can die.”
35. ”Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant / The only harmless great thing.”
36. “No man is an Island, entire of it self; 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 own were; 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.”
37. ”On a round ball / A workman that hath copies by, can lay / An Europe, Afrique and an Asia, / And quickly make that, which was nothing, All.”
38. ”One short sleep past, we wake eternally, / And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.”
39. ”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.”
40. ”Pictures in our eyes to get / Was all our propagation.”~
41. ”Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right.”
42. ”Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere,/ This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere.”
43. “Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls.For, thus friends absent speak.”
44. ”So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss, / Which sucks two souls, and vapours both away,/ Turn thou ghost that way, and let me turn this, / And let our selves benight our happiest day.”
45. ”So, if I dream I have you, I have you, / For all our joys are but fantastical.”
46. ”So must pure lovers' souls descend / T'affections, and to faculties, / Which sense may reach and apprehend, / Else a great Prince in prison lies.”
47. ”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.”
48. “Take heed of loving me;At least remember, I forbade it thee;Not that I shall repair my unthrifty wasteOf breath and blood, upon thy sighs and tears,By being to thee then what to me thou wast;But so great joy our life at once outwears;Then, lest thy love by my death frustrate be,If thou love me, take heed of loving me.Take heed of hating me,Or too much triumph in the victory.Not that I shall be mine own officer,And hate with hate again retaliate;But thou wilt lose the style of conqueror,If I, thy conquest, perish by thy hate.Then, lest my being nothing lessen thee,If thou hate me, take head of hating me.Yet love and hate me too,So these extremes shall ner'er their office do;Love me, that I may die the gentler way,Hate me, because thy love is too great for me.Or let these two, themselves not me decay;So shall I live, thy stage not triumph be;Lest thou thy love and hate and me undo,To let me live, O love and hate me too.”
49. ”The day breaks not, it is my heart.”
50. “To be no part of any body, is to be nothing.”
51. “TWICE or thrice had I loved thee,Before I knew thy face or name ;So in a voice, so in a shapeless flameAngels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be.Still when, to where thou wert, I came,Some lovely glorious nothing did I see.But since my soul, whose child love is,Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,More subtle than the parent isLove must not be, but take a body too ;And therefore what thou wert, and who,I bid Love ask, and nowThat it assume thy body, I allow,And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.”
52. “We understoodHer by her sight; her pure and eloquent bloodSpoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wroughtThat one might almost say her body thought.”
53. ”What if this present were the world's last night?”
54. “When I died last, and, Dear, I dieas often as from thee I go though it be but an hour ago andlovers hours be full eternity.”
55. “When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.”
