I went to the woods, because I wished to live deliberately, to face only the essential facts of life and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach. I did not want, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived. 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. If life 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. Most people, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it-whether life is of the devil or of God-and have somewhat hastily concluded, that it is the chief end of people to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."