We become what we read

   When we read stories (or novels) about honest, principled, 
   honorable men (or women) we admire them and tend to imitate 
   them.  They become an idealization in our mind that we tend to 
   copy.  Thus reading the right kind of stories can have a good 
   effect on us.  Such stories can remold and remake our values, 
   attitudes, and outlooks and build us into something higher and 
   better (Examples: Pride and Prejudice's Mr. Darcy.  Emma's Mr. 
   Knightley.  Anna Karenin's Levin).  At the same time reading 
   about low, despicable, immoral people also changes us --- in 
   the opposite way.  When one reads about low and immoral people 
   one tends to sort of admire and idealize them and copy them.  
   Low, immoral people also have values and ideals --- they enjoy, 
   value and idealize deception, cheating, lust, adultery, etc. 
   (i.e. badness).  And when we read stories that romanticize bad 
   people it tends to change us.  We tend to copy them.  Thus we 
   tend to become what we read.  It is not only books that tend to 
   change us in this manner.  Other things do it also.  Like 
   movies and television.  And this is why it is so important to 
   be careful about what we read, watch and listen to.