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Quote by Arno Schmidt

“When an important writer recommends a work to you -- whether by openly naming the title; or by shy=covert use of it (which perhaps is the greater praise) then go right ahead and follow his [sic!, etc] momentous hint ! A man with expertise and taste has done trusty spade-work for you : {pre=reading} and winnowing 1000 volumes of antiquated chaff for you. Not to make grateful use of such a hint would mean my thoughtless=arrogant shoving aside all the precious, irreplaceable hours that a venerable predecessor spent reading for me.”

Quote by Arno Schmidt

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Radio Dialogs II

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Arno Schmidt

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“Knowing people can mean so many things. It's like books: there are plenty of gradations between the books one has read and those one hasn't. There are the books one has heard of, those with a plot or style we already know by heart, those we can tell by their cover, those whose jacket copy we've read. Those we want to read and those we never will. One can also read a book and forget it -- in fact, that's my specialty -- or just skim through it. It's the same with people.”

“I want women like Aunt Michelle to understand that it is not only women who look like them who are free, who think, and care about other women. That it is possible for two things to look similar but be completely different. That I cover my head like other strong, respected women have done before me, like Malala Yousafzai, like Kariman Abuljadayel, like my mama. That I cover my head not because I am ashamed, forced, or hiding. But because I am proud and want to [be] seen as I am.”

“One wonders what the classical Sunni scholars such as Imām Ibn Rajab would have said if they could see our state today, where we nd the Four Schools being actively targeted and made to seem deviant, and where Muslims who are not Sharī‘a experts, and thus choose to rely on one of the four great imāms, are maligned for doing so; and where people who do not accept the central role of the four schools, dishonestly portray classical scholars like Imam Ibn Rajab as being against taqlīd and, like them, not adherents of any of them, although in the case of Ibn Rajab, his name is never mentioned except with the open declaration that he was a Hanbali???”

“Imam Ibn Taymiyya has also stated clearly that a person who does not have the tools of ijtihād, that is, has not spent the many years learning Arabic, mastering Usul-al-Fiqh and Uloom al-Hadith, encompassing the Quranic and Hadithic texts, has no right to assert an opinion and that rather, he must do taqlīd.”