Just in case you wondered what passage Virgil Cole was reading from, here's the complete paragraph. Try taking a breath after completing each sentence, before rushing on to the next.
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.
--from his essay on "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Words to live by, I think you'd agree.
Dragon Dave
Related Internet Links
Emerson Central
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