Harper Lee Quotes

I mean this: every time I come home, I feel like I'm coming back to the world, and when I leave Macomb it's like leaving the world.

We saw Uncle Jack every Christmas, and every Christmas he yelled across the street for Miss Maudie to come marry him. Miss Mauide would yell back, "Call a little louder, Jack Finch, and they'll hear you the post office, I haven't heard you yet!" Jem and I thought this a strange way to ask for a lady's hand in marriage, but then again Uncle Jack was rather strange.

You rarely win, but sometimes you do.

I just know Maycomb. I'm not in the least sensitive about it, but good Lord, I'm certainly aware of it.

I need a watchman to tell me this is what a man says but this is what he means, to draw a line down the middle and say here is this justice and there is that justice and make me understand the difference.

Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

I mean it takes a certain kind of maturity to live in the South these days. You don't have it yet, but you have a shadow of the beginnings of it. You haven't the humbleness of mind-" "I thought the fear of the Lord was the beginning of wisdom.""It's the same thing. Humility.

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.

Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open.

So far nothing in your life has interfered with your reasoning process.

Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.

There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire.

Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

Dill was in hearty agreement with this plan of action. Dill was becoming something of a trail anyways, following Jem about... He only grew closer to Jem. (Lee 55)

I wonder how much of the day I spend just callin' after you.

But before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself.

It's not time to worry yet

In Maycomb, if one went for a walk with no definite purpose in mind, it was correct to believe one's mind incapable of definite purpose.

Never, never, never, on cross-examination ask a witness a question you don't already know the answer to.

As Kipling said, that’s another story...

If we followed our feelings all the time, we'd be like cats chasin' their tails.

Atticus, you must be wrong." "How's that?" "Well, most folks seem to think they're right and you're wrong. . ." "They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions," said Atticus, "but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

We’re so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we’ve got men like Atticus to go for us.

Don't you oh well me,sir," Miss Maudie replied, recognizing Jem's fatalistic noises, "you are not old enough to appreciate what I said.

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a court-room, be heany colour of the rainbow, but people have way to carrying their resentments right into a jury box.

...baby, it's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you. So don't let Mrs Dubose get you down. She had enough troubles or her own.

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the tree house; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.

Ladies pick funny things to be proud of.

People have a habit of doing everyday things even under the oddest conditions.

It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.

No, everybody's gotta learn, nobody's born knowin'. That Walter's as smart as he can be, he just gets held back sometimes because he has to stay out and help his daddy. Nothin's wrong with him. Naw, Jem, I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks." .... "That's what I thought too," he said at last, "when I was your age. If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time . . . it's because he wants to stay inside.

...but before I can live with other folks, I've got to live with myself.The one thing that doesn't abide by mojority rule is a person's conscience.

They are simple people, most of them, but that doesn't make them subhuman.You are telling them Jesus loves them, but not much.

In their own way, Tom Robinson's manners were as good as Atticus's

Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions.