John Donne

As sickness is the greatest misery, so the greatest misery of sickness is solitude; when the infectiousness of the disease deters them who should assist from coming; even the physician dares scarce come. Solitude is a torment which is not threatened in hell itself.

For it hath so much of a continual cramp, that it wrests the sinews... but it will not kill me yet; I shall be in this world, like a porter in a great house, ever nearest the door, but seldomest abroad: I shall have many things to make me weary, and yet not get leave to be gone.

Now, when the client, whose last hearing is To-morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man, Who, when he opes his eyes, must shut them then Again by death, although sad watch he keep, Doth practice dying by a little sleep

Thou, sun, art half as happy as we, In that the world's contracted thus. Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be To warm the world, that's done in warming us. Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere; This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, 
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell; 
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well 
And better than thy stroke.

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.

Let me prepare towards her, and let me call This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this Both the year’s, and the day’s deep midnight is.

Who will believe me, if I swear That I have had the plague a year? Who would not laugh at me, if I should say I saw a flash of powder burn a day?

He swallows us and never chaws ; By him, as by chain’d shot, whole ranks do die ; He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.

He that desires to print a book, should much more desire, to be a book.

I observe the physician with the same diligence as he the disease... I fear the more, because he disguises his fear, and I see it with the more sharpness, because he would not have me see it.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like the other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun.

The love of place, and precedency, it rocks us in our cradles, it lies down with us in our graves.

And, after all this passed purgatory, Must sad divorce make us the vulgar story?

Keep the truth which thou hast found; men do not stand In so ill case, that God hath with his hand Sign'd kings' blank charters to kill whom they hate

What if this present were the world’s last night? Mark in my heart, O soul, where thou dost dwell

Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun My last thread, I shall perish on the shore.

I have lov'd, and got, and told, But should I love, get, tell, till I were old, I should not find that hidden mystery.

Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men