Quotes from James Fenimore Cooper

The Hurons hold the pride of the Delawares; the last of the high blood of the Mohicans is in their power

Walking about streets, going to church of Sundays, and hearing sermons, never yet made a man of a human being. Send the boy out upon the broad ocean, if you wish to open his eyes, and let him look upon foreign nations, or what I call the face of nature, if you wish him to understand his own character.

I look upon the redmen to be quite as human as we are ourselves, Hurry. They have their gifts, and their religion, it's true; but that makes no difference in the end, when each will be judged according to his deeds and not according to his skin.

every period of life has its necessities, and at forty-seven it's just as well to trust a little to the head.

Judith:And where, then, is your sweetheart, Deerslayer? Deerslayer: She's in the forest, Judith - hanging from the boughs of the trees, in a soft rain - in the dew on the open grass - the clouds that float about in the blue heavens - the birds that sing in the woods - the sweet springs where I slake my thirst - and in all the other glorious gifts that come from God's Providence!

Ah's me! if we could be what what we wish to be, instead of being only what we are, there would be a great difference in our characters and knowledge and appearance. One may be rude and coarse and ignorant, and yet happy, if he does not know it; but it is hard to see our own failings in the strongest light, just as we wish to hear the least about them.

When men speak, they should say that which does not go in at one side of the head and out at the other. Their words shouldn't be feathers, so light that a wind which does not ruffle the water can blow them away.

It is better for a man to die at peace with himself than to live haunted by an evil conscience!

Indijanac je stvorenje što ?ete ga prije osjetiti nego vidjeti.

Content is a great fortifier of good looks.

I too can play the madman, the fool, the hero; in short, any or everything to rescue her I love.

We live in a world of endless transgressions and selfishness, and no pictures that represent us otherwise can be true.

any eye at all practiced in the signs of a frontier warfare, might easily have traced all those unerring evidences of the ruthless results which attends an Indian vengeance. Still, the sun rose on the Lenape a nation of mourners.

Very few men attain enough of human knowledge to be fully aware how much remains to be learned, and of that which they never can hope to acquire.

My eyes are true and as delicate as a hummingbird's in the day; but they are nothing worth boasting of by starlight.

The voice of him, who made the earth, whispereth in the winds; his breath is the movement of nature!

It's wisest always to be so clad that our friends need not ask us for our names.

The mind is apt to make some efforts to prove the fitness between its qualities and the condition of its owner, though it may often fail, and render that ridiculous which was only hated before.

Then he was wrong, Hurry; very wrong. A man can enjoy plunder peaceably nowhere.

has dropped into the river, said Hurry, after looking carefully along

The result of this conversation was a sudden determination to produce a work which, if it had no other merit, might present truer pictures of the ocean and ships than any that are to be found in the Pirate.

the Evil Spirit delights more to dwell in an artful body, than in one that has no cunning to work upon.

that dog is more to be trusted than many a Christian man; for he never forgets a friend, and loves the hand that gives him bread.

for though the quiet of deep solitude reigned in that vast and nearly boundless forest, nature was speaking with her thousand tongues in the eloquent language of night in a wilderness. The air sighed through ten thousand trees, the water ripped, and at places even roared along the shores; and now and then was heard the creaking of a branch or a trunk, as it rubbed against some object similar to itself, under the vibrations of a nicely balanced body.