"For a time our efforts seem to create, and to adorn, and to perfect, until we forget our origin and destination, substituting self for that divine hand which alone can unite the elements of worlds as they float in gasses, equally from His mysterious laboratory, and scatter them again into thin air when the works of His hand cease to find favour in His view. Let those who would substitute the voice of the created for that of the Creator, who shout "the people, the people," instead of hymning the praises of their God, who vainly imagine that the masses are sufficient for all things, remember their insignificance and tremble. They are but mites amid millions of other mites, that the goodness of providence has produced for its own wise ends; their boasted countries, with their vaunted climates and productions, have temporary possessions of but small portions of a globe that floats, a point, in space, following the course pointed out by an invisible finger, and which will one day be suddenly struck out of its orbit, as it was originally put there, by the hand that made it. Let that dread Being, then, be never made to act a second part in human affairs, or the rebellious vanity of our race imagine that either numbers, or capacity, or success, or power in arms, is aught more than a short-lived gift of His beneficence, to be resumed when His purposes are accomplished."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Novelists from the United StatesHistorians from the United StatesPeople from New JerseySailorsChristians from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
The Crater; or, Vulcan's Peak: A Tale of the Pacific (1847), Ch. XXX
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Fenimore_Cooper
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
James Fenimore Cooper
1789 – 1851
US-amerikanischer Schriftsteller
44 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by James Fenimore Cooper →
Related Quotes
"It is probable a true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts are the results of …"
"I will go upon the rock, boys, and look abroad for the savages," said Ishmael shortly after, advancing towards them w…"
"One of the most melancholy consequences of this habit of deferring to other nations, and to other systems, is the fac…"
"God has given the salt lick to the deer; and He has given to man, red-skin and white, the delicious spring at which t…"
"'Tis grand! 'tis solemn! 'tis an education of itself to look upon!"
"Those families, you know, are our upper crust—not upper ten thousand."
"Trust to HIM. There are days in which the sun is not seen—when a lurid darkness brings a second night over the earth.…"
"I shall only say that I have passed a varied and eventful life, that it has been my fortune to see earth, heavens, oc…"
"There is an uneasy desire among a vast many well-disposed persons to get the fruits of the Christian Faith, without t…"
"Few men exhibit greater diversity, or, if we may so express it, greater antithesis of character than the native warri…"