I know not whether the remark is to our honour or otherwise, that lessons of wisdom have never such power over us, as when they are wrought into the heart, through the ground-work of a story which engages the passions: Is it that we are like iron, and must first be heated before we can be wrought upon?
Laurence Sterne, James P. Browne (1873). “The Works of Laurence Sterne ...: With a Life of the Author”, p.217, London : Bickers, H. Sotheran