“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 independence of solitude.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

images by: strange_me’s flickr

“He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.” – Oscar Wilde

“People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

images by: emma mcnally
via: butdoesitfloat