Essays

The following words are from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1841 Essay on Self-Reliance. In this part of his essay, he addresses the concern too many have— “What will others think?” Do we have the courage, the fortitude to believe in ourselves?

From Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841:

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.

This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the  independenceof solitude.