You are the judge of yourself

Especially in the case of people like us who live private lives which only go on parade before ourselves, we must establish an inner model to serve as touchstone of our actions, by which we are at times favor ourselves or flog ourselves. I have my own laws and law-court to pass judgement on me and I appeal to them rather than elsewhere. I restrain my actions according to the standards of others, but I enlarge them according to my own. No one but you knows whether you are base or cruel, or loyal and dedicated. Others never see you: they surmise about you from uncertain conjectures; they do not see your nature so much as your artifice. So do not cling to their sentence: cling to your own.

Michel de Montaigne - Essays, On repenting (III,2)

Don't follow today's morality

Basing the recompense of virtuous deeds on another's approbation is to accept too uncertain and confused a foundation - especially since in a corrupt and ignorant period like our own to be in good esteem with the masses is an insult: whom would you trust to recognize what was worthy of praise! May God save me from being a decent man according to the self-descriptions which I daily see everyone give to the honour themselves: 'What used to be vices have become morality ' (Seneca, Epist. Moral.)

Michel de Montaigne - Essays, On repenting III,2