James Fenimore Cooper Quotes

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.

These families you know are our upper crust not upper ten thousand.

Principles become modified in practise by facts.

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

tis hard to live in a world where all look upon you as below them.

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

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

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.