We admire Chaucer for his sturdy English wit.... But though it is full of good sense and humanity, it is not transcendent poetry.For picturesque description of persons it is, perhaps, without a parallel in English poetry; yet it is essentially humorous, as the loftiest genius never is.
Henry David ThoreauWe never exchange more than three words with a Friend in our lives on that level to which our thoughts and feelings almost habitually rise.
Henry David ThoreauFor if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men?
Henry David ThoreauMost men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
Henry David ThoreauMine was, as it were, the connecting link between wild and cultivated fields; as some states are civilized, and others half-civilized, and others savage or barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a half-cultivated field. They were beans cheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state that I cultivated, and my hoe played the Ranz des Vaches for them.
Henry David Thoreau