
“A book worth reading is worth owning.”
Variant: If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.
Source: How To Do It (1871), Ch. IV : How To Write
Context: You may divide literature into two great classes of books. The smaller class of the two consists of the books written by people who had something to say. They had in life learned something, or seen something, or done something, which they really wanted and needed to tell to other people. They told it. And their writings make, perhaps, a twentieth part of the printed literature of the world. It is the part which contains all that is worth reading. The other nineteen-twentieths make up the other class.
“A book worth reading is worth owning.”
Variant: If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.
“Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.”
“I read part of it all the way through.”
Reported in Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It (1990), p. 42.
Misattributed
Source: The Principles of State and Government in Islam (1961), Chapter 6: Conclusion, p 95
“Most people worth knowing enjoy reading.”
Source: Grip of the Shadow Plague
“All the historical books which contain no lies are extremely tedious.”
Les livres d'histoire qui ne mentent pas sont tout fort maussades.
La Bûche [The Log] (December 24, 1849)
The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881)
Variant: History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.
“Once she read a book but found it distasteful because it contained adjectives.”
Source: The Willoughbys