James Fenimore Cooper Short Quotes

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The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.

James Fenimore Cooper
Superstition is a quality that seems indigenous to the ocean.

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

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

James Fenimore Cooper
Advice is not a gift, but a debt that the old owe to the young.

James Fenimore Cooper
The sublimity connected with vastness, is familiar to every eye.

James Fenimore Cooper
'Tis grand! 'tis solemn! 'tis an education of itself to look upon!

James Fenimore Cooper
On the whole, it [the ocean] is capricious, rather than malignant.

James Fenimore Cooper
Tis hard to live in a world where all look upon you as below them.

James Fenimore Cooper
Those families, you know, are our upper crust—not upper ten thousand.

James Fenimore Cooper
The expanse of the ocean is seldom seen by the novice with indifference.

James Fenimore Cooper
I do not pretend that all that white men do is properly Christianized...

James Fenimore Cooper
It is seldom men think of death in the pride of their health and strength.

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

James Fenimore Cooper
[The Great Prairies] A vast country, incapable of sustaining a dense population.

James Fenimore Cooper
We do not believe any more in the superior innocence and virtue of a rural population.

James Fenimore Cooper
Systems are to be appreciated by their general effects, and not by particular exceptions.

James Fenimore Cooper
Whatever may be the changes produced by man, the eternal round of the seasons is unbroken.

James Fenimore Cooper
Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close, and even a mathematical relation to each other.

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

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

James Fenimore Cooper
History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness.

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

James Fenimore Cooper
Juries…have the effect…of placing the law in the hands of those who would be most apt to abuse it.

James Fenimore Cooper
Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.

James Fenimore Cooper
Apathy is the great requisite for the station; for woe betide the wretch who fancies any modicum of zeal.

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

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

James Fenimore Cooper
Next to arms, eloquence offers the great avenue to popular favor, whether it be in civilized or savage life.

James Fenimore Cooper
The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend the matter that its possessors are a majority.

James Fenimore Cooper