Top 500 Harper Lee Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Why doesn’t their flesh creep? How can they devoutly believe everything they hear in church and then say the things they do and listen to the things they hear without throwing up?”

— Harper Lee

352. “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

353. “In all his life, Jem had never declined a dare. I suppose he loved honor more than his head.”

— Harper Lee

354. “Cal had told her all girls had it, it was natural as breathing, it was a sign they were growing up, and they had it until they were in their fifties. At the time, Jean Louise was so overcome with despair at the prospect of being too old to enjoy anything when it would finally be over, she refrained from pursuing the subject.”

— Harper Lee

355. “Her world was at its best when her time came to leave it.”

— Harper Lee

356. “Havin’ a gun around’s an invitation to somebody to shoot you.”

— Harper Lee

357. “If this thing’s hushed up it’ll be a simple denial to Jem of the way I’ve tried to raise him. Sometimes I think I’m a total failure as a parent, but I’m all they’ve got. Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him... if I connived at something like this, frankly I couldn’t meet his eye, and the day I can’t do that I’ll know I’ve lost him. I don’t want to lose him and Scout, because they’re all I’ve got.”

— Harper Lee

358. “As she welcomed him silently to the human race, the stab of discovery made her tremble a little.”

— Harper Lee

359. “Good grief, baby, people don’t agree with the Klan, but they certainly don’t try to prevent them from puttin’ on sheets and making fools of themselves in public.”

— Harper Lee

360. “I’m only trying to make you see beyond men’s acts to their motives.”

— Harper Lee

361. “She wondered why she had never thought her country beautiful.”

— Harper Lee

362. “I’m no different from any other woman, and the wrong man would turn me into a screamin’ shrew in record time.”

— Harper Lee

363. “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

364. “Henry,” she said primly, “I’ll have an affair with you but I won’t marry you.”

— Harper Lee

365. “Do you really think so?”

— Harper Lee

366. “Jean Louise,” he said dryly, “not much more than five per cent of the South’s population ever saw a slave, much less owned one. Now, something must have irritated the other ninety-five per cent.” Jean Louise looked blankly at her uncle. “Has it never occurred to you – have you never, somewhere along the line, received vibrations to the effect – that this territory was a separate nation? No matter what its political bonds, a nation with its own people, existing within a nation?”

— Harper Lee

367. “No I’m not. It might benefit you to go back and have a look at what some of our founding fathers really believed, instead of relying so much on what people these days tell you they believed.”

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

369. “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another they are Communists.”

— Harper Lee

370. “I should like to take your head apart, put a fact in it, and watch it go its way through the runnels of your brain until it comes out of your mouth.”

— Harper Lee

371. “The law is what he lives by. He’ll do his best to prevent someone from beating up somebody else, then he’ll turn around and try to stop no less than the Federal Government – just like you, child. You turned and tackled no less than your own tin god – but remember this, he’ll always do it by the letter and by the spirit of the law. That’s the way he lives.”

— Harper Lee

372. “I can tell you. In New York you are your own person. You may reach out and embrace all of Manhattan in sweet aloneness, or you can go to hell if you want to.”

— Harper Lee

373. “Alexandra was one of those people who had gone through life at no cost to themselves; had she been obliged to pay any emotional bills during her earthly life, Jean Louise could imagine her stopping at the check-in desk in heaven and demanding a refund.”

— Harper Lee

374. “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

375. “Jefferson believed full citizenship was a privilege to be earned by each man, that it was not something given lightly nor to be taken lightly. A man couldn’t vote simply because he was a man, in Jefferson’s eyes. He had to be a responsible man. A vote was, to Jefferson, a precious privilege a man attained for himself in a – a live-and-let-live economy.”

— Harper Lee

376. “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

377. “She was easy to look at and easy to be with most of the time, but she was in no sense of the word an easy person. She was afflicted with a restlessness of spirit he could not guess at, but he knew she was the one for him. He would protect her; he would marry her. “Tired of New York?” he said. “No.” “Give me a free hand for these two weeks and I’ll make you tired of it.” “Is that an improper suggestion?” “Yes.” “Go to hell, then.”

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

379. “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

380. “Atticus said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in. Mr. Cunningham displayed no interest in his son, so I tackled his entailment once more in a last-ditch effort to make him feel at home.”

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

382. “It’s grown people who always believe the worst.”

— Harper Lee

383. “Dill was a villain’s villain: he could get into any character part assigned him, and appear tall if height was part of the devilry required.”

— Harper Lee

384. “They said later that Mrs. Merriweather was putting her all into the grand finale, that she had crooned, “Po-ork,” with a confidence born of pine trees and butterbeans entering on cue. She waited a few seconds, then called, “Po-ork?” When nothing materialized, she yelled, “Pork!”

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

386. “We could do nothing to please her. If I said as sunnily as I could, ‘Hey, Mrs Dubose,’ I would receive for an answer, ‘Don’t you say hey to me, you ugly girl! You say good afternoon, Mrs Dubose!”

— Harper Lee

387. “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

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

— Harper Lee

389. “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

390. “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

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

— Harper Lee

392. “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

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. “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

395. “Cecil Jacobs, who lived at the far end of our street next door to the post office, walked a total of one mile per school day to avoid the Radley Place and old Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose. Mrs. Dubose lived two doors up the street from us; neighborhood opinion was unanimous that Mrs. Dubose was the meanest old woman who ever lived. Jem wouldn’t go by her place without Atticus beside him.”

— Harper Lee

396. “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

397. “Well, he can make somebody’s will so airtight can’t anybody meddle with it.”

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

399. “There’s one thing I truly believe, Gertrude,” she continued, “but some people just don’t see it my way. If we just let them know we forgive ’em, that we’ve forgotten it, then this whole thing’ll blow over.”

— Harper Lee

400. “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