Variant: If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.
“Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.”
“if a book isn't self-explanatory, then it isn't worth reading.”
Source: The Zahir
Source: The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade
“A word in the head is worth two in the book.”
A.Word.A.Day (May 7, 2007) http://wordsmith.org/words/stormy_petrel.html
“Most people worth knowing enjoy reading.”
Source: Grip of the Shadow Plague
“It is the part which contains all that is worth reading.”
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.
