"We wonder, of course, how much this transparency reflected the
necessity of being transparent before God. We can only conjecture if a
person who was accustomed to revealing his heart to God, knowing that
concealment was impossible, tends toward the confessional among his
friends, or if our coming before the Lord consistently with real intent
and full purpose of heart necessarily habituates us to transparency, or
if the Spirit of the Lord also enlivens our feelings and intensifies our
emotions, thus requiring greater expressiveness."
-Richard Bushman, The Character Of Joseph Smith
