I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.

The speaker asserts an uncompromising independence: a refusal to be coerced into conformity, whether by law, custom, or social pressure. “Breathe after my own fashion” frames autonomy as something as natural and necessary as respiration—self-direction is not a luxury but a condition of being fully alive. The closing challenge, “Let us see who is the strongest,” casts the conflict as a contest between individual conscience and external force. In Thoreau’s broader thought, such strength is moral and spiritual rather than merely physical: the individual’s integrity can outlast institutions that rely on compulsion. The line crystallizes Thoreau’s recurring theme that genuine freedom begins with inward resistance to being “managed.”