Talk:Homo unius libri

o rly?
Really? Where did Thomas Aquinas use this phrase? (Anonymously contributed by User:82.93.10.238 )
 * A preface to a call of "Original Research" no doubt. The Argument from Ignorance—"I've never heard this"—though so often employed at Wikipedia, is not a strong one. --Wetman 22:12, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
 * A requirement for sourcing is completely acceptable, however, and attacking those who request that a subject be documented is frowned upon. User:Zoe|(talk) 22:19, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Requirements for sourcing commonplaces are all too often indulged in at Wikipedia by those who have not bothered to google. I bothered to google and have improved the article not the talkpage. Fair enough? --=Wetman 22:24, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
 * The anon above asked where the phrase was used. How is that a "commonplace"?  The article did not say.  It seems a completely appropriate question, to me.  User:Zoe|(talk) 18:05, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Online, I find someone attributing Taylor's passage to his Life of Christ Pt. II. S. XII. 16, but have not been able to verify it.
 * The reference is actually Pt. II. S. XII. Discourse XII. 16 of Life of Christ. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.41.12.97 (talk) 20:57, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Translation?
The article needs an elegant English translation of the Lope de Vega quote. Is anyone familiar enough with Dr. Taylor to recognize the context of Southey's quote? Holy Living?-- Wetman 02:18, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


 * More than that. I couldn't find any reference to that quote in the original: https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra/san-isidro-labrador-de-madrid--0/
 * Only two references to books, two to "reading", none to "student". 80.174.59.193 (talk) 14:08, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

GA failed
This article appears more like a list of the quotations of “Homo unius libri”. It lacks the structure of an article. In that regard, it fails criterion 1. As mentioned in the criterion, the article should have “a logical structure, introducing the topic and then grouping together its coverage of related aspects”. See Guide to layout which is basically a template toward the creation of an article. Make sure of the conformance to the other GA criteria before renominating the article. Good luck. RelHistBuff 13:05, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Of note
It has been mentionned here and there that Hitler and Chairman Mao both wrote one famous book, "Mein Kampf" and "Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong". It is interesting to consider the possibility that Aquinas was referring to the type of person motivated to write only one book, as history has shown someone likely to be single minded in the extreme. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.178.78.220 (talk) 17:51, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Switch in interpretation
Almost all cited interpretations seem perfectly aware that the "fear" is of the formidable intellectual opponent who has completely mastered his one chosen topic.

But "the internet" seems to assume that the meaning refers to an illiterate yokel who "has only read one book". Clearly, at some (recent) point, the general interpretation of the phrase must have changed.

An indirect hint that this happened around the 1980s is given in Brown's (1985) comment on how the "words are generally quoted today", i.e. Brown is still aware of the original sense, but he is also aware of the shift in general perception. But we still have almost no presentable examples for instances of this newer and presumably now more common interpretation. --dab (𒁳) 21:02, 26 January 2015 (UTC)