''There can be no doubt that in this world nothing is so indispensable
as love. I observe that Charlotte could not lose me without a
pang, and the very children have but one wish; that is, that I
should visit them again to-morrow. I went this afternoon to tune
Charlotte's piano. But I could not do it, for the little ones
insisted on my telling them a story; and Charlotte herself urged
me to satisfy them. I waited upon them at tea, and they are now
as fully contented with me as with Charlotte; and I told them my
very best tale of the princess who was waited upon by dwarfs.
I improve myself by this exercise, and am quite surprised at the
impression my stories create. If I sometimes invent an incident
which I forget upon the next narration, they remind one directly
that the story was different before; so that I now endeavour to
relate with exactness the same anecdote in the same monotonous
tone, which never changes. I find by this, how much an author
injures his works by altering them, even though they be improved
in a poetical point of view. The first impression is readily
received. We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible
things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him
who would endeavour to efface them.''
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (From the The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774)