Where I Lived, and What I Lived For
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
I went to the woods because I wished to live , to 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 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.
Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men. Our life is 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 the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.
Every word with a dotted underline can be clicked. With the extension, any word on any page works the same way.