"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."
My favorite line from that book:
It is over 100,000 words about ignoring the silly distractions in town and making close observations of nature that help one to "discover oneself".
For example, he writes about how he closely watches ant colonies fighting and compares them to the armies in The Iliad, etc, etc.
But I do understand that ~1700 words in a magazine article is more digestible than 100k words from a 160 year old book if the themes are unfamiliar to the reader.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden