We Are What We Read

Louise Collier Wilcox, The Human Way (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1909), p. 26:

We are what we read almost as much as we are what we think. When we express an opinion of a book we label ourselves. The romantic will hunt through books for romance, the historian for statistics and facts, the statesman for policy and methods, the poet for beauty and ideals, and the philosopher for everything. We take from the author mainly the gift of our sleeping selves — some portion of us so quiescent we hardly recognise it till some one of the great band of embodiers brings it up to the rim of consciousness. We draw out a clearer, better-defined outline of our blurred and dim perceptions. After all, even in books, the statement holds true that we receive but what we give. Or at best, we receive what we are fitted to extract.