Most style is not honest enough.
Since in the long run deception is likely to be found out, your character had better not only seem good, but be it.
And how is clarity to be achieved? Mainly by taking trouble and by writing to serve people rather than to impress them.
Great fear is concealed under daring.
The simile sets two ideas side by side; in the metaphor they become superimposed.
The two World Wars came in part, like much modern literature and art, because men, whose nature is to tire of everything in turn... tired of common sense and civilization.