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Who really said it

No man is an island entire of itself

Written by John Donne 1572–1631 · English metaphysical poet & Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral
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The line opens Meditation XVII of Donne’s prose work “Devotions upon Emergent Occasions” (1624). The 1624 edition reads “No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe”; the modern form — “No man is an island, entire of itself” — is the standard spelling-modernization of that exact sentence.

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“No man is an island entire of itself” John Donne, Meditation XVII, "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" (1624) · Verbatim: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

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Provenance

The source

Work
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII
Author
John Donne (1572–1631)
First published
1624 (London)
Form
Prose meditation — not a poem

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; … any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. 1624 text

Original 1624 spelling shown. The same meditation gives us “for whom the bell tolls” — both phrases come from this single passage.

Read Meditation XVII in full

How we know

  • The passage is the opening of Meditation XVII in Donne’s “Devotions upon Emergent Occasions” (1624), written as he recovered from a near-fatal illness.
  • The full modernized text — “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent…” — is preserved at Luminarium.
  • A common myth is that it’s from a Donne poem; in fact it is prose, from a devotional meditation.
Public domain

“Devotions upon Emergent Occasions” was first published in 1624, and every subsequent scholarly edition of this text (including the 1839 Alford collected works commonly reproduced online) is long out of copyright. The work is firmly in the public domain in the United States.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

The mix-ups

The attribution to Donne is correct, but two things routinely get garbled about this line.

“A Donne poem” Wrong form

Donne is best known for his verse, so people assume this is a poem — but it is prose, the opening of a devotional meditation, not a stanza.

Thomas Merton Later borrower

The Trappist monk Thomas Merton titled his 1955 essay collection No Man Is an Island, and the phrase is sometimes credited to him — but he was quoting Donne, who wrote it 331 years earlier.

The words are genuinely Donne’s, from Meditation XVII of the 1624 “Devotions” — and they are prose, not verse.

Context

Why it endures

Donne wrote the Devotions in December 1623 as he lay seriously ill, hearing the passing-bells toll for the dying in the parish around him. Meditation XVII turns that sound into a statement about human interdependence: no person exists in isolation, and every death diminishes the whole of mankind.

The passage has since seeded the language twice over — “no man is an island” and “for whom the bell tolls” (later the title of Ernest Hemingway’s 1940 novel) both come from these same few lines.

Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Friendship

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Meditation XVII (full text)luminarium.org

The complete modernized text of the meditation containing the line.
Devotions upon Emergent Occasionsen.wikipedia.org

Background on the 1624 work and its most-quoted meditation.
‘No Man Is An Island’: meaning & contextnosweatshakespeare.com

Explains the source and the common misbelief that it is a poem.
John Donneen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the poet and Dean of St Paul’s (1572–1631).
No Man Is an Island — the phrasephrases.org.uk

Phrase history tracing it to Donne’s 1624 Devotions.

The true author

About John Donne

John Donne

1572–1631 · English metaphysical poet & Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral

John Donne was the leading English metaphysical poet, celebrated for verse of dazzling wit and intensity (“Death, be not proud”; “The Flea”). Ordained in 1615, he became Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in 1621. He wrote Devotions upon Emergent Occasions in 1623 while gravely ill; its Meditation XVII gave English two of its most enduring phrases — “no man is an island” and “for whom the bell tolls.”

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

John Donne, “Meditation XVII,” in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (London, 1624); modernized text in The Works of John Donne, vol. III, ed. Henry Alford (London: John W. Parker, 1839), 574–75.

MLA (9th ed.)

Donne, John. “Meditation XVII.” Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, London, 1624.

APA (7th ed.)

Donne, J. (1624). Devotions upon emergent occasions.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘No man is an island entire of itself’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/no-man-is-an-island-entire-of-itself/

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