Ralph Waldo Emerson on Reading
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“Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough of literature.”
“If we encountered a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read.”
“I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across the Charles river when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.”