A Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Ask Books Encounter Him Intellect Man Rare Reads Should

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Ralph Waldo Emerson
American - Philosopher
May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882

There are books that one reads over and over again, books that become part of the furniture of one's mind and alter one's whole attitude to life, books that one dips into but never reads through, books that one reads at a single sitting and forgets a week later.

George Orwell

I love rare books. Not that I own a lot of them, mind you. You couldn't quite call me a rare-book collector. But I did once work in a rare-books library, and I wrote a novel about a rare book.

Lev Grossman

A man's bookcase will tell you everything you'll ever need to know about him," my father had told me more than once. "A businessman has business books and a dream has novels and books of poetry. Most women like reading about love, and a true revolutionary will have books about the minutiae of overthrowing the oppressor. A person with no books is inconsequential in a modern setting, but a peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.

Walter Mosley

We consider Christmas as the encounter, the great encounter, the historical encounter, the decisive encounter, between God and mankind. He who has faith knows this truly; let him rejoice.

Pope Paul VI

We cannot ask a man what he will do, and if we should, and he should answer us, we should despise him for it. Therefore we must take a man whose opinions are known.

Abraham Lincoln

I always give books. And I always ask for books. I think you should reward people sexually for getting you books. Don't send a thank-you note, repay them with sexual activity. If the book is rare or by your favorite author or one you didn't know about, reward them with the most perverted sex act you can think of. Otherwise, you can just make out.

John Waters

Obama is a great man who's just beginning to understand the realities. And I'm not just saying that because he reads my books. I would have voted for him anyway.

E. L. Doctorow

Unless a man is prepared to ask a woman to be his wife, what right has he to claim her exclusive attention? Unless she has been asked to marry him, why would a sensible woman promise any man her exclusive attention? If, when the time has come for a commitment, he is not man enough to ask her to marry him, she should give him no reason to presume that she belongs to him.

Elisabeth Elliot

It is all, as usual, paradox. I have to use what intellect I have in order to write books, but I write the kind of books I do in order that I may try to set down glimpses of things that are on the other side of the intellect. We do not go around and discard the intellect, but we must go through and beyond it.

Madeleine L'Engle

A man is known by the books he reads.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man's bookseller should keep his confidence, like his physician. What can become of a world where every man knows what another man reads? Why, sir, books would become like quacks' potions, with every mountebank in the newspapers claiming one volume's superiority over another.

P.B. Kerr

No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books.

Romain Rolland

One can't prescribe books, even the best books, to people unless one knows a good deal about each individual person. If a man is keen on reading, I think he ought to open his mind to some older man who knows him and his life, and to take his advice in the matter, and above all, to discuss with him the first books that interest him.