1. “His head was large; his shoulders narrow; his arms long and gangling; while his hands were small if not delicate. His legs and thighs were thin, nearly to emaciation, but of extraordinary length; and his knees would have been considered tremendous, had they not been outdone by the broader foundations on which this false superstructure of blended human orders was so profanely reared.”

Cooper’s derogatory description of David Gamut’s physical appearance (Chapter 1).

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

Cora speaking of Magua (Chapter I).

3. “There is reason in an Indian, though nature has made him with a red-skin!”

Hawkeye speaking to Chingachgook (Chapter III).

4. “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.”

Chingachgook telling Hawkeye about the history of his people (Chapter III).

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.”

Hawkeye speaking to Cora (Chapter VII).

6. “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.”

Magua, thinking that Hawkeye is dead, speaking to Heyward (Chapter X).

7. “’T would have been a cruel and an unhuman act for a white-skin; but ‘t is the gift and natur’ of an Indian, and I suppose it should not be denied.”

Hawkeye speaking of Chingachgook’s scalping of the French sentinel (Chapter XIV).

8. “‘There is a principle in that,’ he said, ‘different from the law of the woods; and yet it is fair and noble to reflect upon.’”

Hawkeye’s response to David’s request that if he should be killed, his murderers should be forgiven (Chapter XXVI).

9. “He was good; he was dutiful; he was brave. Who can deny it?”

Chingachgook, speaking of Uncas after his death (Chapter XXXIII).

10. “The pale-faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red-men has not yet come again.”

Tamenund, the Delaware patriarch, speaking at the end of the novel (Chapter XXXIII).