thinner than the paper on which it is printed

I smirk and shrug at the paradoxes of a) reading Thoreau's journal online, and b) usually not even reading it--not enough time. But sometimes something catches my eye:

The last two Tribunes I have not looked at. I have no time to read newspapers. If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events which make the news transpire,—thinner than the paper on which it is printed,—then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them.

From the Blog of Henry David Thoreau, 3 April 1853