Walden

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. . . . I wanted to live deep and such out the marrow of life, to live so sturdily . . . [as] 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 meannes of it . . . or if it were sublime, to know it by experience.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden