James Fenimore Cooper

It is enough. Go, children of the Lenape, the anger of the Manitou is not done. Why should Tamenund stay? The pale faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red men has not yet come again. My day has been too long. In the morning I saw the sons of Unamis happy and strong; and yet, before the night has come, have I lived to see the last warrior of the wise race of the Mohicans.

“'Tis a strange calling!” muttered Hawkeye, with an inward laugh, “to go through life, like a catbird, mocking all the ups and downs that may happen to come out of other men's throats.

When the white man dies, he thinks he is at peace; but the red-men know how to torture even the ghosts of their enemies.

It should be remembered that men always prize that most which is least enjoyed. Thus, in a new country, the woods and other objects, which in an old country would be maintained at great cost, are got rid of, simply with a view of “improving” as it is called.

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

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

Few men exhibit greater diversity, or, if we may so express it, greater antithesis of character than the native warrior of North America. In war, he is daring, boastful, cunning, ruthless, self-denying, and self-devoted; in peace, just, generous, hospitable, revengeful, superstitious, modest, and commonly chaste.

In short, the magnifying influence of fear began to set at naught the calculations of reason, and to render those who should have remembered their manhood, the slaves of the basest passions.

Your young white, who gathers his learning from books and can measure what he knows by the page, may conceit that his knowledge, like his legs, outruns that of his fathers', but, where experience is the master, the scholar is made to know the value of years, and respects them accordingly.

I have listened to all the sounds of the woods for thirty years, as a man will listen whose life and death depend on the quickness of his ears.

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

Should we distrust the man because his manners are not our manners, and that his skin is dark?