"As one goes on in life, this terrible and disconcerting shyness of youth disappears. We begin to realize, with a wholesome loss of vanity and conceit, how very little people care or even notice how we are dressed, how we look, or what we say. We learn that other people are as much preoccupied with their thoughts and fancies and reflections as we are with our own. We realize that if we are anxious to produce an agreeable impression, we do so far more by being interested and sympathetic, than by attempting a brilliance which we cannot command. 

We perceive that other people are not particularly interested in our crude views, nor very grateful for the expression of them. We acquire the power of combination and co-operation, in losing the desire for splendor and domination. We see that people value ease and security, more than they admire originality and fantastic contradiction. And so we come to the blessed time when, instead of reflecting after a social occasion whether we did ourselves justice, we begin to consider rather the impression we have formed of other personalities." 

Arthur Benson.