Letter 114 — On Style as a Mirror of Character (§20)

“These and similar faults, which imitation stamps upon one’s style, are not necessarily indications of loose standards or of debased mind; for they are bound to be personal and peculiar to the writer, enabling one to judge thereby of a particular author’s temperament; just as an angry man will talk in an angry way, an excitable man in a flurried way, and an effeminate man in a style that is soft and unresisting.”