Harper Lee Quotes

With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.

~ Harper Lee

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.

~ Harper Lee

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.

~ Harper Lee

As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don't think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, 'I'm probably no better than you, but I'm certainly your equal.

~ Harper Lee

Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in.

~ Harper Lee

Atticus, he was real nice.Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.

~ Harper Lee

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

~ Harper Lee

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.

~ Harper Lee

Don’t talk like that, Dill,” said Aunt Alexandra. “It’s not becoming to a child. It’s – cynical.”“I ain’t cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin’ the truth’s not cynical, is it?”“The way you tell it, it is.

~ Harper Lee

Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.

~ Harper Lee

Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.

~ Harper Lee

Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

~ Harper Lee

When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em.

~ Harper Lee

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

~ Harper Lee

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

~ Harper Lee

You deny them hope... You are telling them that Jesus loves them, but not much.

~ Harper Lee

How could this be so, I wondered, as I read Mr. Underwood's editorial. Senseless killing--Tom had been given due process of law to the day of his death; he had been tried openly and convicted by twelve good men and true; my father had fought for him all the way. Then Mr. Underwood's meaning became clear: Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.

~ Harper Lee

Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.

~ Harper Lee

You rarely win, but sometimes you do.

~ Harper Lee

Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal (...). There is a tendency (...) for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious-because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe-some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they're born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others-some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men.

~ Harper Lee

Ladies pick funny things to be proud of.

~ Harper Lee

Something is wrong with me, it's something about me. it has to be me because all those people cannot have changed.

~ Harper Lee

He was letting you break your icons one by one. he was letting you reduce him to the status of a human being.

~ Harper Lee

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.

~ Harper Lee

I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.

~ Harper Lee

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

~ Harper Lee

Again, as I had often met it in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all clergymen.

~ Harper Lee

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

~ Harper Lee

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read

~ Harper Lee

She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it.

~ Harper Lee

...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.

~ Harper Lee

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

~ Harper Lee

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

~ Harper Lee

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.- Atticus Finch

~ Harper Lee

Thought you could kill my Snow-on-the-Mountain, did you? Well, Jessie says that the top's growing back out. Next time you'll know how to do it right, won't you? You'll pull it up by the roots, won't you?

~ Harper Lee

When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness’ sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasionquicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles ‘em. No, you had the right answer this afternoon, but the wrong reasons. Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re notattracting attention with it. Hotheadedness isn’t.

~ Harper Lee

People generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for, and they have a right to subject their children to it.

~ Harper Lee

He might have hurt me a little,' Atticus conceded, 'but sn, you'll understand folks a little better when you're older. A mob's always made up of people, no matter what. Mr Cunnignham was part of a mob last night, but he ws still a man.Every mob in every little Souhern town is always made up of people you know - doesn't say much for them, does it?''I'll say ot, ' said Jem.'So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses, didn't it?' said Atticus. 'That proves something - that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children.

~ Harper Lee

A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishing pole behind him. A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children played in the front yard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention. It was fall, and his children fought on the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose's. . . . Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day's woes and triumphs on their faces. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled, apprehensive. Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter, and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and shot a dog. Summer, and he watched his children's heart break. Autumn again, and Boo's children needed him. Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.

~ Harper Lee

There was nowhere to go, but I turned to go and met Atticus's vest front. I buried my head in it and listened to the small internal noises that went on behind the light blue cloth: his watch ticking, the faint crackle of his starched shirt, the soft sound of his breathing.'Your stomach's growling,' I said.'I know it,' he said.

~ Harper Lee