Top 500 Harper Lee Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “They have manners, Claudine. They’re just different from ours. The person who pushed me on the bus expected to be pushed back. That’s what I was supposed to do; it’s just a game. You won’t find better people than in New York.”

— Harper Lee

352. “People’s attitudes toward the duties of a government have changed. The have-nots have risen and have demanded and received their due – sometimes more than their due. The haves are restricted from getting more. You are protected from the winter winds of old age, not by yourself voluntarily, but by a government that says we do not trust you to provide for yourself, therefore we will make you save.”

— Harper Lee

353. “Good God, girl!” shouted her uncle. “It was an army of individuals! They walked off their farms and walked to the War!”

— Harper Lee

354. “His name’s Arthur and he’s alive.”

— Harper Lee

355. “Men in this age have turned the Other Woman into a psychiatrist’s couch, and at far less expense, too.”

— Harper Lee

356. “They’re people, aren’t they? We were quite willing to import them when they made money for us.”

— Harper Lee

357. “You won’t find better people than in New York.”

— Harper Lee

358. “Dr. Finch had drunk so long and so deep of his heady brew that his being was shot through with curious mannerisms and odd exclamations.”

— Harper Lee

359. “He never counted what it cost him; he never looked back.”

— Harper Lee

360. “Consequently, the town remained the same size for over 150 years. Its primary reason for existence was government. What saved it from becoming another grubby little Alabama community was that Maycomb’s proportion of professional people ran high: one went to Maycomb to have his teeth pulled, his wagon fixed, his heart listened to, his money deposited, his mules vetted, his soul saved, his mortgage extended.”

— Harper Lee

361. “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.”

— Harper Lee

362. “Before she dozed off, it occurred to her that for the first time in her life Calpurnia had said “Yes ma’am” and “Miss Scout” to her, forms of address usually reserved for the presence of high company.”

— Harper Lee

363. “He rarely gathered news; people brought it to him. It was said he made up every edition of The Maycombe Tribune out of his own head and wrote it down on the linotype.”

— Harper Lee

364. “Blind, that’s what I am. I never opened my eyes. I never thought to look into people’s hearts, I looked only in their faces.”

— Harper Lee

365. “What made you think of Dill?” she asked. “I don’t know. Just thought of him.” “You never liked him, did you?” Henry smiled. “I was jealous of him. He had you and Jem to himself all summer long, while I had to go home the day school was out. There was nobody at home to fool around with.”

— Harper Lee

366. “What Mr. Radley did was his own business. If he wanted to come out, he would. If he wanted to stay inside his own house he had the right to stay inside free from the attentions of inquisitive children, which was a mild term for the likes of us.”

— Harper Lee

367. “There was no finer young man, said the people of Maycomb, than Henry Clinton. Jean Louise agreed.”

— Harper Lee

368. “Jean Louise grinned. Her father said it took at least five years to learn law after one left law school: one practiced economy for two years, learned Alabama Pleading for two more, reread the Bible and Shakespeare for the fifth. Then one was fully equipped to hold on under any conditions.”

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

370. “But in the absence of eye-witness there’s always a doubt, sometimes only the shadow of a doubt. The law says ‘reasonable doubt’, but I think a defendant’s entitled to the shadow of doubt. There’s always the possibility, no matter how improbable, that he’s innocent.”

— Harper Lee

371. “Ladies seemed to live in faint horror of men, seemed unwilling to approve wholeheartedly of them. But I liked them. There was something about them, no matter how much they cussed and drank and gambled and chewed; no matter how undelectable they were, there was something about them that I instinctively liked.”

— Harper Lee

372. “Pleading’s little more than putting on paper what you want to say.”

— Harper Lee

373. “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.’ When.”

— Harper Lee

374. “Jem,” I asked, “what’s a mixed child?” “Half white, half colored. You’ve seen ’em, Scout. You know that red-kinky-headed one that delivers for the drugstore. He’s half white. They’re real sad.” “Sad, how come?” “They don’t belong anywhere. Colored folks won’t have ’em because they’re half white; white folks won’t have ’em ’cause they’re colored, so they’re just in-betweens, don’t belong anywhere.”

— Harper Lee

375. “There was nothing whatever wrong with Mr. Stone, except that he possessed all the necessary qualifications for a certified public accountant: he did not like people, he was quick with numbers, he had no sense of humor, and he was butt-headed.”

— Harper Lee

376. “You can’t do that, Scout,” Atticus said. “Sometimes it’s better to bend the law a little in special cases. In your case, the law remains rigid. So to school you must go.”

— Harper Lee

377. “All we had was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by his stinginess.”

— Harper Lee

378. “People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County.”

— Harper Lee

379. “Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public streets.”

— Harper Lee

380. “Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment.”

— Harper Lee

381. “You’re starting off on the wrong foot in every way, my dear. Hold out your hand.” I thought she was going to spit in it, which was the only reason anybody in Maycomb held out his hand: it was a time-honored method of sealing oral contracts.”

— Harper Lee

382. “That her son had developed all the latent characteristics of a three-dollar bill escaped her notice – all she knew was that she was glad he lived in Birmingham because he was oppressively devoted to her, which meant that she felt obliged to make an effort to reciprocate, which she could not with any spontaneity do.”

— Harper Lee

383. “You deny them hope. Any man in this word, Atticus, any man who has a head and arms and legs, was born with hope in his heart.”

— Harper Lee

384. “Atticus Finch’s a deep reader, a mighty deep reader.”

— Harper Lee

385. “That Calpurnia led a modest double life never dawned on me. The idea that she had a separate existence outside our household was a novel one, to say nothing of her having command of two languages.”

— Harper Lee

386. “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.”

— Harper Lee

387. “He had asked me earlier in the summer to marry him, then he promptly forgot about it. He staked me out, marked as his property, said I was the only girl he would ever love, then he neglected me. I beat him up twice but it did no good, he only grew closer to Jem.”

— Harper Lee

388. “It doesn’t make sense to me. Looks like if Mr. Arthur was hankerin’ after heaven he’d come out on the porch at least. Atticus says God’s loving folks like you love yourself – ” Miss Maudie stopped rocking, and her voice hardened. “You are too young to understand it,” she said, “but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of – oh, of your father.” I.”

— Harper Lee

389. “The Radley Place was inhabited by an unknown entity the mere description of whom was enough to make us behave for days on end; Mrs. Dubose was plain hell.”

— Harper Lee

390. “Aver coraggio significa sapere di essere sconfitti prima ancora di cominciare, e cominciare egualmente e arrivare sino in fondo, qualsiasi cosa succeda.”

— Harper Lee

391. “Atticus said professional people were poor because the farmers were poor. As Maycomb County was farm country, nickels and dimes were hard to come by for doctors and dentists and lawyers.”

— Harper Lee

392. “Don’t argue with a man, especially when you know you can beat him.”

— Harper Lee

393. “In spite of herself, Jean Louise grinned. Alexandra could be relied upon to produce a malapropism on occasions, the most notable being her comment on the gulosity displayed by the youngest member of a Mobile Jewish family upon completing his thirteenth year: Alexandra declared that Aaron Stein was the greediest boy she had ever seen, that he ate fourteen ears of corn at his Menopause.”

— Harper Lee

394. “Let’s try to make him come out,” said Dill. “I’d like to see what he looks like.” Jem said if Dill wanted to get himself killed, all he had to do was go up and knock on the front door.”

— Harper Lee

395. “A mob’s always made up of people, no matter what.”

— Harper Lee

396. “With her head on his shoulder, Jean Louise was content. It might work after all, she thought. But I am not domestic. I don’t even know how to run a cook. What do ladies say to each other when they go visiting? I’d have to wear a hat. I’d drop the babies and kill ’em.”

— Harper Lee

397. “She loved everything that grew in God’s earth, even the weeds. With one exception. If she found a blade of nut-grass in her yard it was like the Second Battle of the Marne: she swooped down upon it with a tin tub and subjected it to blasts from beneath with a poisonous substance she said was so powerful it’d kill us all if we didn’t stand out of the way.”

— Harper Lee

398. “If I could have explained these things to Miss Caroline, I would have saved myself some inconvenience and Miss Caroline subsequent mortification, but it was beyond my ability to explain things as well as Atticus, so I said, “You’re shamin’ him, Miss Caroline. Walter hasn’t got a quarter at home to bring you, and you can’t use any stovewood.”

— Harper Lee

399. “Jem said Mr. Avery misfigured, Dill said he must drink a gallon a day, and the ensuing contest to determine relative distances and respective prowess only made me feel left out again, as I was untalented in this area.”

— Harper Lee

400. “Bootleggers caused enough trouble in the Quarters, but women were worse. 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