“See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.
What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”
―
Henry David Thoreau,
Walden or, Life in the Woods
