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.1
1
From Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” in The Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: Random House, 1950), p.150. Essay first published in Essays: First Series in 1841