Top 500 Harper Lee Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “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

352. “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

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

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

356. “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

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

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

360. “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

361. “Do you really think so?”

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

363. “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

364. “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

365. “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

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

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

368. “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

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

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

371. “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

372. “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

373. “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

374. “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

375. “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

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

— Harper Lee

377. “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

378. “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

379. “Uno es valiente cuando, sabiendo que ha perdido ya antes de empezar, empieza a pesar de todo y sigue hasta el final, pase lo que pase.”

— Harper Lee

380. “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

381. “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

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

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

385. “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

386. “You tell Cecil I’m about as radical as Cotton Tom Heflin.”

— Harper Lee

387. “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

388. “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

389. “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

390. “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

391. “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

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

— Harper Lee

393. “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

394. “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

395. “The world’s endin’, Atticus! Please do something – !” I dragged him to the window and pointed. “No it’s not,” he said. “It’s snowing.”

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

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

— Harper Lee

398. “As Kipling said, that’s another story...”

— Harper Lee

399. “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

400. “Stephanie Crawford even told me once she woke up in the middle of the night and found him looking in the window at her. I said what did you do, Stephanie, move over in the bed and make room for him? That shut her up for a while.”

— Harper Lee