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Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
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“Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;”

John Donne

Source
Holy Sonnet 10 — Death Be Not Proud
Date
1633
Meaning

Meaning of “Death, be not proud, though some have called…”

Donne personifies Death only to deny its final authority, building a Christian devotional argument that mortality does not have the last word.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Holy Sonnet 10, posthumously printed in 1633 and represented by Wikisource. The poem’s defiance of death rests on explicitly Christian claims about resurrection and eternal life; it is devotional poetry, not factual evidence about death.

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Themes

Ideas connected with this quotation

Courage Quotes About Acting Despite FearDeepHope Quotes About Possibility in Uncertain TimesPositive Quotes About a Constructive OutlookShortThought-Provoking Quotes That Invite ReflectionDeathReligion
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“God's in his heaven—All's right with the world!”

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Meaning & context

Pippa’s song voices a moment of religious confidence and ordinary delight whose effect in the drama depends on other characters hearing it at morally decisive moments.

Source details

Pippa Passes (1841), represented in the Project Gutenberg Robert Browning works edition #59123. The lyric is sung by Pippa inside a verse drama; its Christian optimism is a character-song within the play, not a factual guarantee that every event is good.

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“If goodness lead him not, yet weariness May toss him to my breast.”

George Herbert · The Pulley · 1633
Meaning & context

Herbert’s poem imagines restlessness and weariness as forces that may turn a person toward God when abundance and comfort do not, within its specifically Christian account of human desire.

Source details

“The Pulley,” from The Temple (1633), represented by Poetry Foundation. The ending is spoken by God within Herbert’s devotional conceit and expresses Christian theology rather than a medical or psychological explanation of fatigue.

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“In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright.”

William Cullen Bryant · To a Waterfowl · 1818
Meaning & context

The speaker takes the waterfowl’s guided migration as a religious image of trust that his own solitary path can also have direction.

Source details

“To a Waterfowl,” represented in Project Gutenberg #29700. The closing lines explicitly infer providential guidance from the bird’s flight; the claim remains Christian-inflected lyric reflection, not evidence about supernatural intervention.

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“my hopes rose high that somewhere in this teeming hive there would be a place for me.”

Jacob A. Riis · The Making of an American · 1901
Voice: Authorial / signed preface voice · Jacob A. Riis (autobiographical narrator)
Meaning & context

Looking back on arrival in New York, Riis remembers hope that even an overwhelming city might contain a place where he could begin a life.

Source details

The Making of an American, represented by Project Gutenberg #6125. This clause is retained from Riis’s first-person immigrant autobiography as he recalls arriving in New York; it is personal retrospective narrative rather than a general claim about immigration outcomes.

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The love of life is, in general, the effect not of our enjoyments, but of our passions.
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“The love of life is, in general, the effect not of our enjoyments, but of our passions.”

William Hazlitt · On the Love of Life · 1815
Meaning & context

Hazlitt argues that attachment to continued life is driven less by a simple calculation of pleasure than by active desires, interests and passions that keep a person engaged with what may happen next.

Source details

The Round Table, No. 1, ‘On the Love of Life,’ dated 15 January 1815 in the represented collected text, Project Gutenberg #55932. The sentence opens Hazlitt's argument that attachment to life is driven more by active passions than by present enjoyment and is immediately followed by ‘Without life there can be no action.’ It is philosophical-psychological essay argument, not modern clinical evidence.

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“Love has no age, no limit, and no death.”

John Galsworthy · Indian Summer of a Forsyte · 1918
Meaning & context

Irene answers an older man’s skepticism by insisting that love is not confined by age and does not simply vanish when a person or relationship passes away.

Source details

Indian Summer of a Forsyte, represented in Project Gutenberg #2594. Irene says the line to old Jolyon while speaking about her dead lover; it is emotionally charged fictional dialogue, and the surrounding conversation immediately gives old Jolyon a more ironic response.