Looking for famous quotes by Deborah Sampson? We have rounded up the best collection of Deborah Sampson quotes, sayings, (with images and pictures) to inspire you.
Deborah Sampson Gannett, better known as Deborah Sampson, was a Massachusetts woman who disguised herself as a man in order to serve in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.
What is Deborah Sampson Known For?
Deborah Sampson Gannett became a hero of the American Revolution when she disguised herself as a man and joined the Patriot forces. She was the only woman to earn a full military pension for participation in the Revolutionary army.
Deborah Sampson Quotes
- “Why can I not fight for my country too?”
- “I burst the tyrant bands, which held my sex in awe.”
- “As I was born to be unfortunate, my sun soon clouded.”
- “Such is my experience – not that I ever mourned the loss of a child, but that I consider myself as lost!”
- “Must I forever counteract inclination and stay within the compass of the smoke of my own chimney?”
- “As an overruling providence may succeed our wishes, let us rear an offspring in every respect worthy to fill the most illustrious stations of their predecessors.”
- “I take it to be from the greatest extremes, both in virtue and in vice, that the uniformly virtuous and reformed in life can derive the greatest and most salutary truths and impressions.”
- “I am indeed willing to acknowledge what I have done, an error and presumption. I will call it an error and presumption because I swerved from the accustomed flowery paths of female delicacy.”
- “In whatever I may be thought to have been unnatural, unwise and indelicate, it is now my most fervent desire it may have a suitable impression on you – and on me, a penitent for every wrong thought and step.”
- “November 11, 1802, I arrived at Judge Patterson’s at Lisle. This respectable family treated me with every mark of distinction and friendship, and likewise all the people did the same. I really want for words to express my gratitude.”
- “I am indeed willing to acknowledge what I have done, an error and presumption. I will call it an error and presumption because I swerved from the accustomed flowery path of female delicacy, to walk upon the heroic precipice of feminine perdition!”
- “What shall I say further? Shall I not stop short and leave to your imaginations to portray the tragic deeds of war? Is it not enough that I here leave it even to unexperience to fancy the hardships, the anxieties, the dangers, even of the best life of a soldier?”
- “I became an actor in that important drama with an inflexible resolution to persevere through the last scene, when we might be permitted and acknowledged to enjoy what we had so nobly declared we would possess, or lose with our lives – Freedom and Independence!”
- “Wrought upon at length, you may say, by an enthusiasm and frenzy that could brook no control – I burst the tyrant bands, which held my sex in awe, and clandestinely, or by stealth, grasped an opportunity, which custom and the world seemed to deny, as a natural privilege.”
- “On the whole, as we readily acquiesce in the acknowledgment that the field and the cabinet are the proper spheres assigned to our Masters and our Lords, may we also deserve the dignified title and encomium of Mistress and Lady in our kitchens and in our parlours.”
- “Repentance is a sweet solace to conscience as well as the most complete atonement to the Supreme Judge of our offenses; notwithstanding, the tongue of malevolence and scurrility may be continually preparing its most poisonous ingredients for the punishment of a crime, which has already received more than half a pardon.”
- “My mind became agitated with the enquiry – why a nation, separated from us by an ocean more than three thousand miles in extent, should endeavor to enforce on us plans of subjugation, the most unnatural in themselves, unjust, inhuman in their operations, and unpracticed even by the uncivilized savages of the wilderness?”
- “Happy for America, happy for Europe, perhaps for the world when, on the delivery of Cornwallis’s sword to the illustrious, the immortal Washington, or rather by his order, to the brave Lincoln, the sun of Liberty and Independence burst through a sable cloud, and his benign influence was, almost instantaneously, felt in our remotest corners!”
