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I've heard it said that there are men who read in books to convince themselves there is a God. I know not but man may so deform his works in the settlements, as to leave that which is so clear in the wilderness a matter of doubt among traders and priests.

James F. Cooper

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James F. Cooper
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Leave
Settlements
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Wilderness
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More quotes by James F. Cooper

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Battles, unlike bargains, are rarely discussed in society.
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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. Unrestrained political authority, though it be confided to masses, cannot be trusted without positive limitations, men in bodies being but an aggregation of the passions, weaknesses and interests of men as individuals.
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There is a destiny in war, to which a brave man knows how to submit with the same courage that he faces his foes.
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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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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
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Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.
James F. Cooper
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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.
James F. Cooper
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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.
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tis hard to live in a world where all look upon you as below them.
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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
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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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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
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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
James F. Cooper
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A soul,--a spark of the never-dying flame that separates man from all the other beings of earth.
James F. Cooper
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Where are your combing seas, your blue water, your rollers, your breakers, your whales, or your waterspouts, and your endless motion, in this bit of a forest, child?
James F. Cooper
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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
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It is seldom men think of death in the pride of their health and strength.
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Hope is the most treacherous of all human fancies.
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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
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If we would have civilization and the exertion indispensable to its success, we must have property if we have property, we must have its rights if we have the rights of property, we must take those consequences of the rights of property which are inseparable from the rights themselves.
James F. Cooper