Who really said it

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink

Not quite Coleridge — a misquote of the real line Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772–1834 · English Romantic poet & critic

Disputed Free to reuse

The image is genuinely Coleridge’s — it comes from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798) — but he did not write it this way. The real lines read “Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink.” The familiar “everywhere and not a drop to drink” is a smoothed-out paraphrase that appears nowhere in the poem.

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

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Disputed — copy with the correction

“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink” Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1798). The real line reads: "Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink."

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In context

Evoking the world of Samuel Taylor Coleridge — English Romantic poet, critic & philosopher. Theme: "Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The real line, in context

Work: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
First published: 1798, in Lyrical Ballads (rev. 1817)
Location: Part the Second

Water, water, every where, / And all the boards did shrink; / Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink.

The becalmed mariner is surrounded by undrinkable sea. Note “every where” (two words) and “Nor any drop” — the exact wording the popular version rewrites.

Read the full poem at Project Gutenberg

How we know

The poem was “written…in 1797–98 and published in 1798” per Wikipedia.
The stanza on Project Gutenberg ends exactly “Nor any drop to drink.”
Wikipedia notes the lines are “usually given in a more natural modern phrasing” — i.e. commonly misquoted.

Public domain

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” was first published in 1798 and revised in 1817 — both editions are long in the public domain. The popular “and not a drop to drink” wording, however, is a later paraphrase found in no edition of the poem.

Fact-check

A misquote, not a misattribution

The right poet, the wrong words. Coleridge is correctly credited — but almost nobody quotes what he actually wrote.

“…and not a drop to drink” paraphrase

The popular version replaces Coleridge’s “every where, / Nor any drop to drink” with the smoother “everywhere and not a drop to drink.” Wikipedia notes the lines are “usually given in a more natural modern phrasing” that departs from the original.

Everyday usage drift

The line is often used to mean “plenty of something, none of it usable” — close to Coleridge’s intent, though he wrote of literal, undrinkable seawater around a becalmed ship.

Coleridge wrote “Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink” — confirmed in the poem’s text.

Context

Why the line endures

In the poem, a sailor shoots an albatross and dooms his ship to a windless, cursed calm. The crew are trapped on a rotting deck ringed by an entire ocean they cannot drink — a perfect image of abundance that saves no one.

That paradox is why the line escaped the poem. It now stands for any glut that offers no relief: data without insight, choices without a good one, water everywhere and none to drink.

Surrounded by an ocean, dying of thirst.

Explore

Filed under

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

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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.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (full text)gutenberg.org

Public-domain text of the poem; the stanza ends “Nor any drop to drink.”

The Rime of the Ancient Marineren.wikipedia.org

Publication history (1798, rev. 1817) and a note on the common modern misquotation.

Why do we say ‘Water, water everywhere’?bookbrowse.com

Traces the phrase to Coleridge and its everyday use.

Quote by Samuel Taylor Coleridgegoodreads.com

The full stanza as Coleridge wrote it, for side-by-side comparison.

The real author

About Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1772–1834 · English Romantic poet, critic & philosopher

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a founder of the English Romantic movement and, with William Wordsworth, co-author of Lyrical Ballads (1798). “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” — his supernatural sea ballad of guilt, penance and the albatross — opened that volume and remains his most quoted work.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” in Lyrical Ballads (London: J. & A. Arch, 1798), Part the Second.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/water-water-everywhere-and-not-a-drop-to-drink