Books have always a secret influence on the understanding: we cannot at
pleasure obliterate ideas; he that reads books of science, though
without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing; he that
entertains himself with moral or religious treatises will imperceptibly
advance in goodness; the ideas which are often offered to the mind will
at last find a lucky moment when it is disposed to receive them.--S.
JOHNSON. _Adventurer_, 137.