“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.” – Henry David Thoreau

Walden is full of these nice cuts of text, but for every beautiful sentiment and powerful observation, there are hundreds of lines of very obtuse language.

‘Much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a few sticks are slanted over him or under him, and what colors are daubed upon his box. It would signify somewhat, if, in any earnest sense, he slanted them and daubed it; but the spirit having departed out of the tenant, it is of a piece with constructing his own coffin — the architecture of the grave — and “carpenter” is but another name for “coffin-maker.”‘ – Wordy Henry David Thoreau

Right then.