"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not when I came to die discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life to cut a broad swath and shave close to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms and if it proved to be mean why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime to know it by experience and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. "