to the woods

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover 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 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."
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden, "Where I Lived and What I Lived For"

I remember part of this quote from Dead Poet's Society, particularly sucking the marrow out of life. It makes me think of the movie Into the Wild too, the search for meaningful life which did not arise from following the norm, the facing of one's demons alone and away from people.

I don't agree with all of Thoreau's ideas in this quote though (if I do understand them correctly). I do want to live life with a greater degree of consciousness and conscientiousness, but to drive it into a corner and demand that it showed itself either as lowly, harsh or grand and outstanding seems too simplistic a divide. Perhaps the true account of life on this side on eternity will yield both. More importantly, isn't it how we choose to react which matters?