Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America Quotes

“This is a curious fellow, admirably well-fitted for the time. No wonder he stands so high in the estimation of the people. Profligate yet apparently religious, conceited and stubborn, he can do mischief with all the placidity of a good man and carefully avoid the ostensible parts of the sinner.”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“Authority is a commodity which is become so common that it is become less valuable than heretofore. There are so many givers of passes and pretenders to power and control that we are extremely cautious of adulterating our general pass by the addition of new and unknown names.”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“This is fulfilling the Bible to a tittle; this is lowering the high and rewarding the low; this is humbling the proud; this is exalting the Christian, the meek man. He, she, or they that fulfil thus the word of God shall be blessed; that is, shall prosper in this world and the next. (He drinks.) Here is, God bless the Congress and damn the popish king.”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“Could the laws be founded but on common justice they would not need of any amendments.”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“To aim at a greater share of political felicity, to make the world believe we were slaves, to make us exchange the silken cords of our ancient government for the rattling chains of our timocracy, is perhaps the most monstrous instance of perfidy, ingratitude, and successful hypocrisy that ever was exhibited in the world before.”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“What this world was made for, I am sure I cannot tell. There is rather a degree of impiety in wishing to investigate so sublime a scheme. But in our obscure gropings and strange wanderings, it really appears as if it was even so. For they are the greatest majority, and the greatest number surely should have the greater right in a system where everything depends on force. This is infallibly the case except where the wisdom of the few has set itself in opposition and become superior.”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“What are we in the great scale of events, we poor defenceless frontier inhabitants? What is it to the gazing world whether we breathe or whether we die? Whatever virtue, whatever merit and disinterestedness we may exhibit in our secluded retreats, of what avail? We are like the pismires destroyed by the plough, whose destruction prevents not the future crop.”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“Sophistry, the bane of freemen, launches forth in all her deceiving attire!”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“Great events are not achieved for us, though it is by us that they are principally accomplished, by the arms, the sweat, the lives of the people.”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“The innocent class are always the victims of the few; they are in all countries and at all times the inferior agents on which the popular phantom is erected; they clamour and must toil and bleed, and are always sure of meeting with oppression and rebuke.”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“Gracious God! To what end is the introduction of so many beings into a mode of existence in which they must grope amidst as many errors, commit as many crimes, and meet with as many diseases, wants, and sufferings!”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“Everywhere one part of the human species is taught the art of shedding the blood of the other, of setting fire to their dwellings, of levelling the works of their industry: half of the existence of nations regularly employed in destroying other nations.”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“There the very delirium of tyranny tramples on the best gifts of nature and sports with the fate, the happiness, the lives of millions; there the extreme fertility of the ground always indicates the extreme misery of the inhabitants!”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“Even under those mild climates which seem to breathe peace and happiness, the poison of slavery, the fury of despotism, and the rage of superstition are all combined against man!”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“Hence the most unjust war, if supported by the greatest force, always succeeds; hence the most just ones, when supported only by their justice, as often fail.”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“she created man and placed him either in the woods or plains and provided him with passions which must forever oppose his happiness; everything is submitted to the power of the strongest; men, like the elements, are always at war; the weakest yield to the most potent; force, subtlety, and malice always triumph over unguarded honesty and simplicity.”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“we never speak of a hero of mathematics, a hero of knowledge or humanity, no, this illustrious appellation is reserved for the most successful butchers of the world.”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“Oh, Nature, where art thou? Are not these blacks thy children as well as we?”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“While all is joy, festivity, and happiness in Charles Town, would you imagine that scenes of misery overspread in the country? Their ears by habit are become deaf, their hearts are hardened; they neither see, hear, nor feel for the woes of their poor slaves, from whose painful labours all their wealth proceeds. Here the horrors of slavery, the hardship of incessant toils, are unseen; and no one thinks with compassion of those showers of sweat and of tears which from the bodies of Africans daily drop and moisten the ground they till.”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“Shining talents and university knowledge would be entirely useless here, nay, would be dangerous; it would pervert their plain judgement, it would lead them out of that useful path which is so well adapted to their situation; it would make them more adventurous, more presumptuous, much less cautious, and therefore less successful.”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“This singular establishment has been effected by means of that native industry and perseverance common to all men when they are protected by a government which demands but little for its protection, when they are permitted to enjoy a system of rational laws founded on perfect freedom.”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“The Irish do not prosper so well; they love to drink and to quarrel; they are litigious and soon take to the gun, which is the ruin of everything;”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“Hunting is but a licentious idle life, and if it does not always pervert good dispositions, yet, when it is united with bad luck, it leads to want: want stimulates that propensity to rapacity and injustice, too natural to needy men, which is the fatal gradation.”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America

“Persecution, religious pride, the love of contradiction, are the food of what the world commonly calls religion. These motives have ceased here; zeal in Europe is confined; here it evaporates in the great distance it has to travel; there it is a grain of powder inclosed; here it burns away in the open air and consumes without effect.”
― J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America