Be true to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age. It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, “Always do what you are afraid to do.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet

“Heroism,” Essays: First Series (1841)

See also Schmich.