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.

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

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

Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced.

First of all," he said, "if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view--until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

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

Naw, Jem. I think that there is just one kind of folks. Folks."Jen turned and punched his pillow. WHen he settle back his face was cloudy. He was going in to one of his declines, and I grew wary. His brows came together; his mouth became a thin line. He was silent for a while. That is what I thought, too," he said at last, "when I was your age. If there is just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go ut of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I am beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley stayed shut up in the house all this time...it's because he wants to stay inside

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.

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

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

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.

Ladies pick funny things to be proud of.

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.

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

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

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.

You rarely win, but sometimes you do.

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