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 (2004). “Walden: 150th Anniversary Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.5, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
