Commerce is entitled to a complete and efficient protection in all its legal rights, but the moment it presumes to control a country, or to substitute its fluctuating expedients for the high principles of natural justice that ought to lie at the root of every political system, it should be frowned on, and rebuked.

James F. Cooper

Categorized in : Lying Country Law

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

greatness character men

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

James F. Cooper

dies evil men

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

James F. Cooper

ignorance motivational inspirational

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

James F. Cooper

earth-day lonely nature

Hope is the most treacherous of all human fancies.

James F. Cooper

fancy humans hope

Individuality is the aim of political liberty.

James F. Cooper

individuality liberty political

Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to publick opinion. This is the weak point of our defenses, and the part to which the enemies of the system will direct all their attacks. Opinion can be so perverted as to cause the false to seem the true; the enemy, a friend, and the friend, an enemy; the best interests of the nation to appear insignificant, and trifles of moment; in a word, the right the wrong, and the wrong the right.

James F. Cooper

society government enemy

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

free-gifts air men

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

hymns air winning

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

ability lasts mind

The demagogue is usually sly, a detractor of others, a professor of humility and disinterestedness, a great stickler for equality as respects all above him, a man who acts in corners, and avoids open and manly expositions of his course, calls blackguards gentlemen, and gentlemen folks, appeals to passions and prejudices rather than to reason, and is in all respects, a man of intrigue and deception, of sly cunning and management.

James F. Cooper

passion humility men

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

James F. Cooper

vastness eye book

I can't see no great difference atween givin' up territory afore a war, out of a dread of war, and givin' it up after a war, because we can't help it-unless it be that the last is the most manful and honourable.

James F. Cooper

territory differences war

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

James F. Cooper

hero love history

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

government rights mean

There are evils worse than death.

James F. Cooper

evil

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

James F. Cooper

cutting sea tree

America owes most of its social prejudices to the exaggerated religious opinions of the different sects which were so instrumental in establishing the colonies.

James F. Cooper

different religious america

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

James F. Cooper

abuse simplicity ambition

Principles . . . become modified in practice, by facts.

James F. Cooper

principles practice reality