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
practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep
and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike
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 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. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty
about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily
concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy
him forever.'
Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were
long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error
upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion
a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by
detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers,
or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity,
simplicity, simplicity!
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