<P> Homo unius libri ("(a) man of one book") is a Latin phrase attributed to Thomas Aquinas in a literary tradition going back to at least the 17th century, bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613--1667) being the earliest known writer in English to have done so . Saint Thomas Aquinas is reputed to have employed the phrase "hominem unius libri timeo" (meaning "I fear the man of a single book"). </P> <P> There are other attributions, and variants of the phrase . Variants include cave for timeo, and virum or lectorem ("reader") for hominem . The Concise Dictionary of Foreign Quotations (London 1998), attributes the quote to Augustine of Hippo . Other attributions named Pliny the Younger, Seneca, Quintilian or Augustine, but the existence of the phrase cannot be substantiated as predating the early modern period . </P> <P> The phrase was in origin a dismissal of eclecticism, i.e. the "fear" is of the formidable intellectual opponent who has dedicated himself to and become a master in a single chosen discipline; however, the phrase today most often refers to the interpretation of expressing "fear" of the opinions of the illiterate man who has "only read a single book". </P> <P> The literary critic Clarence Brown described the phrase in his introduction to a novel by Yuri Olesha: </P>

Beware of a man of one book. english proverb meaning
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