Letter 114 — On Style as a Mirror of Character (§1)

“You have been asking me why, during certain periods, a degenerate style of speech comes to the fore, and how it is that men’s wits have gone downhill into certain vices—in such a way that exposition at one time has taken on a kind of puffed-up strength, and at another has become mincing and modulated like the music of a concert piece. You wonder why sometimes bold ideas—bolder than one could believe—have been held in favour, and why at other times one meets with phrases that are disconnected and full of innuendo, into which one must read more meaning than was intended to meet the ear.”