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 any existence of mediocrity.

— James Fenimore Cooper

... As for me, I taught the lad the real character of a rifle; and well has he paid me for it. I have fought at his side in many a bloody scrimmage; and so long as I could hear the crack of his piece in one ear, and that of the Sagamore in the other, I knew no enemy was on my back. Winters and summers, nights and days, have we roved the wilderness in company, eating of the same dish, one sleeping while the other watched; and fore it shall be said that UCAS was taken to the torment, and I at hand - There is but a single ruler of us all, whatever maybe the color of the skin, and him I call to witness - that before the Mohican boy shall perish for the want of a friend, good faith shall depart the 'art and 'Kill-deer' become as harmless as the tooting we'PON of the singer!

— James Fenimore Cooper

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

— James Fenimore Cooper

God planted the seeds of all the trees," continued Betty, after a moment's pause, "and you see to what a height and shade they have grown! So it is with the Bible. You may read a verse this year, and forget it, and it will come back to you a year hence, when you least expect to remember it.

— James Fenimore Cooper

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

— James Fenimore Cooper

In America the taint of sectarianism lies broad upon the land. Not content with acknowledging the supremacy as the Deity, 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. Religion's first lesson is humility; its fruit, charity. In the great and sublime ends of Providence, little things are lost, and least of all is he imbued with a right spirit who believes that insignificant observances, subtleties of doctrine, and minor distinctions, enter into the great essentials of the Christian character. The wisest thing for him who is disposed to cavil at the immaterial habits of his neighbor, to split straws on doctrine, to fancy trifles of importance, and to place the man before principles, would be to distrust himself.

— James Fenimore Cooper

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

— James Fenimore Cooper

I sometimes wish I had been educated a Catholic, in order to unite the poetry of religion with its higher principles. Are they necessarily inseparable? Is man really so much of a philosopher, that he can conceive of truth in its abstract purity, and divest life and the affections of all the aids of the imagination?

— James Fenimore Cooper

...it should be remembered that men always prize that most which is least enjoyed.

— James Fenimore Cooper

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

— James Fenimore Cooper