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The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity, since the tastes, knowledge, and principles of the majority form the tribunal of appeal.

James F. Cooper

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James F. Cooper
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The ability to discriminate between that which is true and that which is false is one of the last attainments of the human mind.
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Everybody says it, and what everybody says must be true.
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There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore.
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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.
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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.
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A soul,--a spark of the never-dying flame that separates man from all the other beings of earth.
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It is the fate of all things to ripen, and then to decay.
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History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness.
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The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.
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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.
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In America, it is indispensable that every well wisher of true liberty should understand that acts of tyranny can only proceed from the publick. The publick, then, is to be watched, in this country, as, in other countries kings and aristocrats are to be watched.
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If the newspapers are useful in overthrowing tyrants, it is only to establish a tyranny of their own.
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Principles . . . become modified in practice, by facts.
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The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend the matter that its possessors are a majority.
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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.
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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.
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The expanse of the ocean is seldom seen by the novice with indifference.
James F. Cooper
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We live in a world of transgressions and selfishness, and no pictures that represent us otherwise can be true though happily for human nature, gleamings of that pure spirit in whose likeness man has been fashioned, are to be seen, relieving its deformities, and mitigating, if not excusing its crimes.
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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
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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