a straight course................................

3.   Reserve your right to any deed or utterance that accords with nature.  Do not be put off by the criticisms or comments that may follow;  if there is something good to be done or said, never renounce your right to it.  Those who criticize you have their own reason to guide them, and their own impulse to prompt them;  you must not let your eyes stray towards them, but keep a straight course and follow your own nature and the World-Nature (and the way of these two is one).


-Marcus Aurelius,  Meditations,  Book V