"The Last of the Mohicans" Quotes
Study GuideThe Last of the Mohicans is a famous novel by James Fenimore Cooper, an American writer. Here are a few quotes from the work.
The Last of the Mohicans Quotes
The Last of the Mohicans Quotes
- "Should we distrust the man because his manners are not our manners, and that his skin is dark?"
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. 1
- "It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide and apparently an impervious boundary of forests severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict. But, emulating the patience and self-denial of the practised native warriors, they learned to overcome every difficulty; and it would seem that, in time, there was no recess of the woods so dark, nor any secret place so lovely, that it might claim exemption from the inroads of those who had pledged their blood to satiate their vengeance, or to uphold the cold and selfish policy of the distant monarchs of Europe."
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. 1
- "There is reason in an Indian, though nature has made him with a red-skin!"
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. 3 - "I am on the hill-top, and must go down into the valley; and when Uncas follows in my footsteps, there will no longer be any of the blood of the Sagamores, for my boy is the last of the Mohicans."
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. 3 - "When men struggle for the single life God has given them ... even their own kind seem no more than the beasts of the wood."
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. 5 - "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."
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. 7 - "Life is an obligation which friends often owe each other in the wilderness."
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. 8 - "There are evils worse than death."
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. 8 - "With two such examples of courage before him, a man would be ashamed to prove other than a hero."
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. 9 - "Was it war when the tired Indian rested at the sugar tree to taste his corn? who filled the bushes with creeping enemies? who drew the knife? whose tongue was peace, while his heart was colored with blood?"
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. 10 - "There is a destiny in war, to which a brave man knows how to submit with the same courage that he faces his foes."
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. 16 - "The savage spurned the worthless rags, and perceiving that the shawl had already become a prize to another, his bantering but sullen smile changed to a gleam of ferocity, he dashed the head of the infant against a rock, and cast its quivering remains to her very feet. For an instant the mother stood, like a statue of despair, looking wildly down at the unseemly object, which had so lately nestled in her bosom and smiled in her face; and then she raised her eyes and countenance toward heaven, as if calling on God to curse the perpetrator of the foul deed. She was spared the sin of such a prayer for, maddened at his disappointment, and excited at the sight of blood, the Huron mercifully drove his tomahawk into her own brain. The mother sank under the blow, and fell, grasping at her child, in death, with the same engrossing love that had caused her to cherish it when living."
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. 17 - "Your tongue is loud in the village, but in battle it is still."
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. 23 - "The sight of a coward's blood can never make a warrior tremble."
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. 24 - "Well, what can't be done by main courage, in war, must be done by circumvention."
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. 26 - "Then Magua arose and gave the signal to proceed, marching himself in advance. They followed their leader singly, and in that well-known order which has obtained the distinguishing appellation of "Indian file." Unlike other men engaged in the spirit-stirring business of war, they stole from their camp unostentatiously and unobserved, resembling a band of gliding spectres, more than warriors seeking the bubble reputation by deeds of desperate daring."
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. 27 - "The gifts of our colors may be different, but God has so placed us as to journey in the same path."
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. 33 - "The pale-faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red-men has not yet come again."
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. 33