James Fenimore Cooper

Hebrews. This book is much superior to most of the writings attributed to St. Paul, though passages in the other books are very admirable.

Genesis. What an extraordinary history! It is impossible for us to appreciate conduct, when a power like that of God is directly brought to bear on it. Obedience to him is our first law.

Chapter XXX, conclusion of the novel

It is enough. Go, children of the Lenape, the anger of the Manitou is not done. Why should Tamenund stay? The pale faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red men has not yet come again. My day has been too long. In the morning …

Chingachgook grasped the hand that, in the warmth of feeling, the scout had stretched across the fresh earth, and in an attitude of friendship these two sturdy and intrepid woodsmen bowed their heads together, while scalding tears fell to …

Every trail has its end, and every calamity brings its lesson!

Your young white, who gathers his learning from books and can measure what he knows by the page, may conceit that his knowledge, like his legs, outruns that of his fathers', but, where experience is the master, the scholar is made to know …

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

Is it justice to make evil and then punish for it?

When the white man dies, he thinks he is at peace; but the red-men know how to torture even the ghosts of their enemies.

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

I have listened to all the sounds of the woods for thirty years, as a man will listen whose life and death depend on the quickness of his ears.

It should be remembered that men always prize that most which is least enjoyed. Thus, in a new country, the woods and other objects, which in an old country would be maintained at great cost, are got rid of, simply with a view of …

“'Tis a strange calling!” muttered Hawkeye, with an inward laugh, “to go through life, like a catbird, mocking all the ups and downs that may happen to come out of other men's throats.

I am on the hill-top, and must go down into the valley; and when Uncas follows in my footsteps, there will no longer be any of the blood of the Sagamores, for my boy is the last of the Mohicans.

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

In short, the magnifying influence of fear began to set at naught the calculations of reason, and to render those who should have remembered their manhood, the slaves of the basest passions.

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, …

It is probable a true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts are the results of sudden impulses and accident, than of that reason of which we so much boast.

I shall only say that I have passed a varied and eventful life, that it has been my fortune to see earth, heavens, ocean, and man in most of their aspects; but never have I beheld any spectacle which so plainly manifested the majesty of …

Trust to HIM. There are days in which the sun is not seen—when a lurid darkness brings a second night over the earth. It matters not. The great luminary is always there. There may be clouds before his face, but the winds will blow them …

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

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

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.