The Forcible Style

Original

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. 

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Summary

Just like a bunch of stuff about being independent and not living by the world’s opinion or whatever.

Blind Re-Write

Great men follow this one simple rule, that you should not live by the world’s opinion. This rule, however straightforward, is very important, and no matter how many people scream that you do not know how to do your duty, you must stick to it. Many men have fallen victim to the temptation of the world’s opinion, and although it may be easier to simply go along with what the world thinks, you must have your own opinion.

My Paragraph

Many felines may catch mice, and sometimes they will drag them into your place of dwelling, but you must not be disgusted. The cat is simply doing what millions of years of evolution have trained it to do, and it has a right to do so. No matter how many times you must sweep up severed mouse heads from under the table, or how often you must listen to the shrieks of the dying mice, you must let the cat hunt and eat whatever it wants. For such is its right.