James F. Cooper Quotes

The sun had not risen, but the vault of heaven was rich with the winning, softness that "brings and shuts the day," while the whole air was filled with the carols of birds, the hymns of the feathered tribe.

Christ , in the parable of the vine dressers, has taught us a sublime lesson of justice, by showing that to the things which are not our own, we can have no just claim.

The minority of a country is never known to agree, except in its efforts to reduce and oppress the majority.

A monarchy is the most expensive of all forms of government, the regal state requiring a costly parade, and he who depends on his own power to rule, must strengthen that power by bribing the active and enterprising whom he cannot intimidate.

They who have reasoned ignorantly, or who have aimed at effecting their personal ends by flattering the popular feeling, have boldly affirmed that 'one man is as good as another;' a maxim that is true in neither nature, revealed morals, nor political theory.

Everybody says it, and what everybody says must be true.

Should we distrust the man because his manners are not our manners, and that his skin is dark?

Candor is a proof of both a just frame of mind, and of a good tone of breeding. It is a quality that belongs equally to the honest man and to the gentleman.

Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to public opinion.

No civilized society can long exist, with an active power in its bosom that is stronger than the law.

There are evils worse than death,

The sight of a coward's blood can never make a warrior tremble.

I can't see no great difference atween givin' up territory afore a war, out of a dread of war, and givin' it up after a war, because we can't help it-unless it be that the last is the most manful and honourable.

A refined simplicity is the characteristic of all high bred deportment, in every country, and a considerate humanity should be the aim of all beneath it.

Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other.

Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving the citizen as much freedom of action and of being as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner.

It is a governing principle of nature, that the agency which can produce most good, when perverted from its proper aim, is most productive of evil.

It is a misfortune that necessity has induced men to accord greater license to this formidable engine, in order to obtain liberty, than can be borne with less important objects in view; for the press, like fire, is an excellent servant, but a terrible master.

Friendship that flows from the heart cannot be frozen by adversity, as the water that flows from the spring cannogt congeal in winter.

The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior to those who are not, so long as he is the repository of power, and the child inherits the wealth of the parent as a controlling law of society.

Slavery is no more sinful, by the Christian code, than it is sinful to wear a whole coat, while another is in tatters, to eat a better meal than a neighbor, or otherwise to enjoy ease and plenty, while our fellow creatures are suffering and in want.

Hope is the most treacherous of all human fancies.

It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide and apparently an impervious boundary of forests severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict.

What will the axemen do, when they have cut their way from sea to sea?

Aristocracy: A combination of many powerful men, for the purpose of maintaining their own particular interests. It is consequently a concentration of all the most effective parts of a community for a given end, hence its energy, efficiency and success.

God has given the salt lick to the deer; and He has given to man, red-skin and white, the delicious spring at which to slake his thirst.

Liberty is not a matter of words, but a positive and important condition of society. Its greatest safeguard after placing its foundations in a popular base, is in the checks and balances imposed on the public servants.

Contact with the affairs of state is one of the most corrupting of the influences to which men are exposed.

There is a destiny in war, to which a brave man knows how to submit with the same courage that he faces his foes.

If we would have civilization and the exertion indispensable to its success, we must have property; if we have property, we must have its rights; if we have the rights of property, we must take those consequences of the rights of property which are inseparable from the rights themselves.

One of the most melancholy consequences of this habit of deferring to other nations, and to other systems, is the fact that it causes us to undervalue the high blessings we so peculiarly enjoy; to render us ungrateful towards God, and to make us unjust to our fellow men, by throwing obstacles in their progress towards liberty.

The listeners got some such insights into their past lives, as one gets into the darker parts of the woods, when a stray gleam of sunshine finds its way down to the roots of the trees.

The Americans ... are almost ignorant of the art of music, one of the most elevating, innocent and refining of human tastes, whose influence on the habits and morals of a people is of the most beneficial tendency.

In America, it is indispensable that every well wisher of true liberty should understand that acts of tyranny can only proceed from the publick. The publick, then, is to be watched, in this country, as, in other countries kings and aristocrats are to be watched.

No star seemed less than what science has taught us that it is.

The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.

All that a good government aims at ... is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own unavoidable consequences, and to abstain from fortifying and accumulating social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities.

A single glance at the map will make the reader acquainted with the position of the eastern coast of the island of Great Britain, as connected with the shores of the opposite continent.

The ability to discriminate between that which is true and that which is false is one of the last attainments of the human mind.

How easy it is for generous sentiments, high courtesy, and chivalrous courage to lose their influence beneath the chilling blight of selfishness, and to exhibit to the world a man who was great in all the minor attributes of character, but who was found wanting when it became necessary to prove how much principle is superior to policy.

Some changes of language are to be regretted, as they lead to false inferences, and society is always a loser by mistaking names for things.

Perfection is always found in maturity, whether it be in the animal or in the intellectual world. Reflection is the mother of wisdom, and wisdom the parent of success.

As reason and revelation both tell us that this state of being is but a preparation for another of a still higher and more spiritual order, all the interests of life are of comparatively little importance, when put in the balance against the future.

Principles ... become modified in practice, by facts.

A soul,
a spark of the never-dying flame that separates man from all the other beings of earth.