Especially the transcendental philosophy needs the leaven of humor to render it light and digestible.
Henry David ThoreauWe have need to be earth-born as well as heaven-born, gegeneis, as was said of the Titans of old, or in a better sense than they.
Henry David ThoreauNone can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.
Henry David ThoreauThis life we live is a strange dream, and I don't believe at all any account men give of it.
Henry David ThoreauSee yonder thin column of smoke curling up through the woods from some invisible farmhouse, the standard raised over some rural homestead.... It is a hieroglyphic of man's life, and suggests more intimate and important things than the boiling of a pot. Where its fine column rises above the forest, like an ensign, some human life has planted itself,--and such is the beginning of Rome, the establishment of the arts, and the foundation of empires, whether on the prairies of America or the steppes of Asia.
Henry David Thoreau