James Fenimore Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper

WRITER

Favorite writer of generations of Americans, Cooper was born on Tuesday, September 15th, 1789, and grew up on his family's huge wooded settlement, in Cooperstown, New York, which his father, William Cooper, a prominent Federalist, had founded before this son's birth. His days as a Yale student were cut short when he was expelled for misbehavior. He gamely joined the navy, earning the rank of midshipman. On New Year's Day, Tuesday, January 1st, 1811 he married Susan Augusta De Lancey, settling down and writing prolifically, politically, and prodigiously. Eventually he and his wife moved south to an estate in Scarsdale, New York, where he continued to write and publish his critical, thoughtful, and creative works. Cooper died at Cooperstown on Sunday, September 14th, 1851, one day shy of reaching sixty-two.
  • When was
    James Fenimore Cooper born?

    James Fenimore Cooper was born on Tuesday, September 15, 1789

  • Where was
    James Fenimore Cooper born?

    James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlgton, New Jersey, USA

  • How old was
    James Fenimore Cooper when they died?

    James Fenimore Cooper was 62

  • When did James Fenimore Cooper die?

    James Fenimore Cooper died on
    Sunday, September 14, 1851


Best Quotes

  • Everybody says it, and what everybody says must be true.
  • Slavery is no more sinful, by the Christian code, than it is sinful to wear a whole coat, while another is in tatters, to eat a better meal than a neighbor, or otherwise to enjoy ease and plenty, while our fellow creatures are suffering and in want.
  • 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.
  • The American doctrinaire is the converse of the American demagogue, and, in this way, is scarcely less injurious to the public. The first deals in poetry, the last in cant. He is as much a visionary on one side, as the extreme theoretical democrat is a visionary on the other.
  • It is a misfortune that necessity has induced men to accord greater license to this formidable engine, in order to obtain liberty, than can be borne with less important objects in view; for the press, like fire, is an excellent servant, but a terrible master.
  • The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.
  • Equality, in a social sense, may be divided into that of condition and that of rights. Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery.
  • The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior to those who are not, so long as he is the repository of power, and the child inherits the wealth of the parent as a controlling law of society.
  • The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
  • 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.
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