Top 80 James F. Cooper Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The press, like fire, is an excellent servant, but a terrible master.”

— James F. Cooper

2. “The expanse of the ocean is seldom seen by the novice with indifference.”

— James F. Cooper

3. “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

4. “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

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

— James F. Cooper

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

— James F. Cooper

7. “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.”

— James F. Cooper

8. “The affairs of life embrace a multitude of interests, and he who reasons in any one of them, without consulting the rest, is a visionary unsuited to control the business of the world.”

— James F. Cooper

9. “It is the fate of all things to ripen, and then to decay.”

— James F. Cooper

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

— James F. Cooper

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

— James F. Cooper

12. “Hope is the most treacherous of all human fancies.”

— James F. Cooper

13. “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 F. Cooper

14. “Advice is not a gift, but a debt that the old owe to the young.”

— James F. Cooper

15. “On the human imagination, events produce the effects of time. Thus, he who has travelled far and seen much, is apt to fancy that he has lived long; and the history that most abounds in important incidents, soonest assumes the aspect of antiquity.”

— James F. Cooper

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

— James F. Cooper

17. “If the newspapers are useful in overthrowing tyrants, it is only to establish a tyranny of their own.”

— James F. Cooper

18. “Whatever may be the changes produced by man, the eternal round of the seasons is unbroken.”

— James F. Cooper

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

— James F. Cooper

20. “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

21. “New York is essentially national in interest, position, pursuits. No one thinks of the place as belonging to a particular state, but to the United States.”

— James F. Cooper

22. “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

23. “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.”

— James F. Cooper

24. “The vulgar charge that the tendency of democracies is to leveling, meaning to drag all down to the level of the lowest, is singularly untrue; its real tendency being to elevate the depressed to a condition not unworthy of their manhood.”

— James F. Cooper

25. “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

26. “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

27. “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 F. Cooper

28. “All greatness of character is dependent on individuality.”

— James F. Cooper

29. “The sight of a coward’s blood can never make a warrior tremble.”

— James F. Cooper

30. “Everybody says it, and what everybody says must be true.”

— James F. Cooper

31. “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

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

— James F. Cooper

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

— James F. Cooper

34. “The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior of those who are not, so long he is the repository of power.”

— James F. Cooper

35. “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

36. “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

37. “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.”

— James F. Cooper

38. “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

39. “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

40. “The sublimity connected with vastness, is familiar to every eye.”

— James F. Cooper

41. “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore.”

— James F. Cooper

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

— James F. Cooper

43. “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

44. “Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.”

— James F. Cooper

45. “Equality, in a social sense, may be divided into that of condition and that of rights. Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery.”

— James F. Cooper

46. “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

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

— James F. Cooper

48. “Apathy is the great requisite for the station; for woe betide the wretch who fancies any modicum of zeal.”

— James F. Cooper

49. “Property is desirable as the ground work of moral independence, as a means of improving the faculties, and of doing good to others, and as the agent in all that distinguishes the civilized man from the savage.”

— James F. Cooper

50. “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.”

— James F. Cooper