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No man is an island

No one is self-sufficient; everyone relies on others. This saying comes from a sermon by the seventeenth-century English author John Donne.

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The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Idioms and Phrases with no man is an island

no man is an island

Human beings necessarily depend on one another, as in You can't manage this all by yourself; no man is an island. This expression is a quotation from John Donne's Devotions (1624): “No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.”

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.