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
... Our life is frittered away by detall. 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! 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. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds
and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom
and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator Indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals
a day, if it be necessary eat but one; Instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion
)
For which main concept did the author go to the woods?
1. conformity
2. honesty
3. minimalism
O 4. solitude