Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit.”
- Source
- The American Scholar
- Date
- 1837
Meaning of “I had better never see a book than…”
Emerson warns that admiration for books becomes harmful when it turns a reader into an imitator instead of strengthening independent thought.
Where does it come from?
The American Scholar; Emerson contrasts creative reading with allowing past books to pull a person away from an independent intellectual orbit.
