It Shows...

Understand that you can have in your writing no qualities which you do not honestly entertain in yourself. Understand that you cannot keep out of your writing the indication of the evil or shallowness you entertain in your self. If you love to have a servant stand behind your chair at dinner, it will appear in your writing—or if you possess a vile opinion of women, or if you grudge anything, or doubt immortality—these will appear by what you leave unsaid more than by what you say. There is no trick or cunning, no art or recipe, by which you can have in your writing what you do not possess in yourself.

~Walt Whitman (Journal entry 1855-56)