Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

"There is some of the same fitness in a man's building of his own house that there is in a bird's building of its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwelling, with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! We do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which others birds have built."