James F. Cooper famous quotes

Last updated: Jul 22, 2024

All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.
-- James F. Cooper

#Character #Men #Greatness
Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving to 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.
-- James F. Cooper

#Mean #Order #Rights
Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other.
-- James F. Cooper

#Motivation #Inspiration #Ignorance
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.
-- James F. Cooper

#Spring #Men #White
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.
-- James F. Cooper

#Art #People #Ignorant
Equality, in a social sense, may be divided into that of condition, and that of rights. . . With an equality of civil rights, all men are equal before the law; all classes of the community being liable equally to taxation, military service, jury duties, and to the other impositions attendant on civilization, and no one being exempted from its control, except on general rules, which are dependent on the good of all, instead of the exemption's belonging to the immunities of individuals, estates, or families. An equality of civil rights may be briefly defined to be an absence of privileges.
-- James F. Cooper

#Military #Men #Rights
The habit of seen the public rule, is gradually accustoming the American mind to an interference with private rights that is slowly undermining the individuality of the national character. There is getting to be so much public right, that private right is overshadowed and lost. A danger exists that the ends of liberty will be forgotten altogether in the means.
-- James F. Cooper

#Character #Mean #Rights
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.
-- James F. Cooper

#Spiritual #Order #Preparation
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.
-- James F. Cooper

#Justice #Sublime #Vines
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.
-- James F. Cooper

#Blessing #Men #Ungrateful
The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
-- James F. Cooper

#Democracy #Mediocrity #Tendencies
Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.
-- James F. Cooper

#Party #Purpose #Legislation
Systems are to be appreciated by their general effects, and not by particular exceptions.
-- James F. Cooper

#Appreciated #Exception #Particular
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.
-- James F. Cooper

#Men #Political #Feelings
There are evils worse than death,
-- James F. Cooper

#Evil
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 F. Cooper

#War #Destiny #Men
At no period of the naval history of the world, is it probable that Marines were more important than during the War of the Revolution,
-- James F. Cooper

#War #Marine #Important
The demagogue is usually sly, a detractor of others, a professor of humility and disinterestedness, a great stickler for equality as respects all above him, a man who acts in corners, and avoids open and manly expositions of his course, calls blackguards gentlemen, and gentlemen folks, appeals to passions and prejudices rather than to reason, and is in all respects, a man of intrigue and deception, of sly cunning and management.
-- James F. Cooper

#Passion #Humility #Men
In America the taint of sectarianism lies broad upon the land. Not content with acknowledging the supremacy as the Diety, and with erecting temples in his honor, where all can bow down with reverence, the pride and vanity of human reason enter into and pollute our worship, and the houses that should be of God and for God, alone, where he is to be honored with submissive faith, are too often merely schools of metaphysical and useless distinctions. The nation is sectarian, rather than Christian.
-- James F. Cooper

#Christian #Lying #School
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.
-- James F. Cooper

#Break Up #Government #United States
Many words are in a state of mutation, the pronunciation being unsettled even in the best society, a result that must often arise where language is as variable and undetermined as the English.
-- James F. Cooper

#Mutation #Variables #Language
Hebrews . This book is much superior to most of the writings attributed to St. Paul, though passages in the other books are very admirable.
-- James F. Cooper

#Book #Writing #Hebrew
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.
-- James F. Cooper

#Mean #Government #Political
It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.
-- James F. Cooper

#Freedom #Men #Law
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 F. Cooper

#Character #Men #Selfishness
Superstition is a quality that seems indigenous to the ocean.
-- James F. Cooper

#Ocean #Quality #Superstitions
No star seemed less than what science has taught us that it is.
-- James F. Cooper

#Stars #Taught
A soul,--a spark of the never-dying flame that separates man from all the other beings of earth.
-- James F. Cooper

#Men #Flames #Soul
Death is appalling to those of the most iron nerves, when it comes quietly and in the stillness and solitude of night.
-- James F. Cooper

#Death #Night #Iron
No one, who is familiar with the bustle and activity of an American commercial town, would recognise, in the repose which now reigns in the ancient mart of Rhode Island, a place that, in its day, has been ranked amongst the most important ports along the whole line of our extended coast.
-- James F. Cooper

#Book #Rhode Island #Islands
Much was said and written, at the time, concerning the policy of adding the vast regions of Louisiana, to the already immense, and but half-tenanted territories of the United-States.
-- James F. Cooper

#Book #United States #Louisiana
Near the centre of that State of New York lies an extensive district of country, whose surface is a succession of hills and dales, or, to speak with greater deference to geographical definitions, of mountains and valleys.
-- James F. Cooper

#Country #New York #Lying
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.
-- James F. Cooper

#Book #Islands #Opposites
The sublimity connected with vastness, is familiar to every eye.
-- James F. Cooper

#Book #Eye #Vastness
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.
-- James F. Cooper

#War #Struggle #Book
Hope is the most treacherous of all human fancies.
-- James F. Cooper

#Hope #Fancy #Humans
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.
-- James F. Cooper

#Winning #Air #Hymns
We can all perceive the difference between ourselves and our inferiors, but when it comes to a question of the difference between us and our superiors we fail to appreciate merits of which we have no proper conceptions.
-- James F. Cooper

#Differences #Appreciate #Merit
These families, you know, are our upper crust, not upper ten thousand.
-- James F. Cooper

#Society #Thousand
As for bread, I count that for nothin'. We always have bread and potatoes enough; but I hold a family to be in a desperate way when the mother can see the bottom of the pork barrel. Give me children that's raised on good sound pork afore all the game in the country. Game's good as a relish and so's bread; but pork is the staff of life... My children I calkerlate to bring up on pork with just as much bread and butter as they want.
-- James F. Cooper

#Country #Mother #Children
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.
-- James F. Cooper

#Sunshine #Past #Roots

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