James Fenimore Cooper - The Last of the Mohicans (1826)

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Few men exhibit greater diversity, or, if we may so express it, greater antithesis of character than the native warrior of North America. In war, he is daring, boastful, cunning, ruthless, self-denying, and self-devoted; in peace, just, generous, hospitable, revengeful, superstitious, modest, and commonly chaste.

James Fenimore Cooper
The air, the water and the ground are free gifts to man and no one has the power to portion them out in parcels. Man must drink and breathe and walk and therefore each man has a right to his share of each.

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

James Fenimore Cooper
The novice in the military art flew from point to point, retarding his own preparations by the excess of his violent and somewhat distempered zeal; while the more practiced veteran made his arrangements with a deliberation that scorned every appearance of haste

James Fenimore Cooper
Chingachgook grasped the hand that, in the warmth of feeling, the scout had stretched across the fresh earth, and in that attitude of friendship these intrepid woodsmen bowed their heads together, while scalding tears fell to their feet, watering the grave of Uncas like drops of falling rain.

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

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

James Fenimore Cooper
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.

James Fenimore Cooper
When men struggle for the single life God has given them... even their own kind seem no more than the beasts of the wood.

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

James Fenimore Cooper