Alice Morse Earle Quotes

The early American arrived at a land of which he knew nothing.

There is something inexpressibly sad in the thought of the children who crossed the ocean with the Pilgrims and the fathers of Jamestown, New Amsterdam, and Boston, and the infancy of those born in the first years of colonial life in this strange new world.

Westward, ever westward.

In a continent but recently settled, many parts of which have as yet little historical or cultural background, the material for this volume has been gathered from a section that was one of the first to be colonized.

When you go back and look at American history, it's not terribly different from Canadian history. If you weren't self-reliant on the prairie, you wouldn't survive.

But it is obvious that our fathers, whose efforts have planted these great and prosperous cities along the once lonely trails of our own broad land, received all the fundamentals of civilization as a heritage from their European ancestors.

I always think about the settlers who moved to New Zealand in the 1800s. They hadn't even been to the place before. They just packed their bags and shipped over knowing they'd never see their family again or be able to speak to them - they'd maybe get a letter if they were lucky.

So many voyages and discoveries without result, and attended with so much hardship and expense, have caused us French in late years to attempt a permanent settlement in those lands which we call New France, in the hope of thus realizing more easily this object

American History is largely the record of the adjustment of a migrating people to their environment.

The Pilgrims landed, worthy men, And saved from wreck on raging seas;, They fell upon their knees, and then Upon the aborigines.

Free Englishmen had independently settled North America in precisely the same their Saxon ancestors … had possessed themselves of the island of Britain.

Anyone who's done their homework knows that the West was a pretty rough-and-tumble place. People from all over the world were there - and when you were there, you had to be tough as nails.

I have heard of Texas pioneers living without bread or anything made from the cereals for months without suffering, using the breast-meat of wild turkeys for bread. Of this kind, they had plenty in the good old days when life, though considered less safe, was fussed over the less.

My father, when he arrived in this country found it difficult.

You cannot settle a new country without suffering, exposure, and danger. Cheerful endurance of hardships and contempt of surroundings become a virtue in a pioneer. Comfort is a comparatively new thing in the United States.

The Jews will establish themselves in Palestine in the same way as the French and English established themselves in Canada or the Boers did in South Africa—by settling on the land.

We now discovered the Shores crowded with thousands of People––Men Women & Children––May I may venture to say Tens of Thousands; From the Fort to the Place of Landing altho’ near half a Mile, you could see little else along the Shores-- -in the Streets and on Board every Vessel, but Heads standing as thick as Ears of corn before the Harvest-

The history of America is the history of families moving.

Our pioneers were all Protestants except for an occasional Irishman.

From Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound, the first priority of the men and women who settled this vast and blessed continent was to put a roof over the heads of their family. And that priority has never, and can never, change.

Soon you’ll be whirled along by steam in a country now only inhabited by wild beasts and Indians

The Trustees intend to relieve such unfortunate persons as cannot subsist here [England], and establish them in an orderly manner, so as to form a well regulated town…. By such a Colony, many families, who would otherwise starve, will be provided for, and made masters of houses and lands…. The Trustees for establishing the Colony of Georgia in America. … are impowered to collect benefactions; and lay them out in cloathing, arming, sending over, and supporting colonies of the poor, whether subjects on foreigners, in Georgia

Since (by the good providence of God) a country in America is fallen to my lot, I thought it not less my duty than my honest interest to give some public notice of it to the world, that those of our own, or other nations, that are inclined to transport themselves or families beyond the seas, may find another country added to their choice

A big city is a big ocean; the one who doesn’t know how to swim finds himself at its bottom!

America has been peopled by Europeans primarily because they expected in that country to make more money more easily.