Harper Lee quotes - page 6

You can choose your friends, but you sho' can't choose your family. (Harper Lee)

Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.

Harper Lee

Pass the damn ham, please.

Harper Lee

A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up.

Harper Lee

Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.

Harper Lee

Every man's island, Jean Louise, every man's watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious.

Harper Lee

As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he'll look for his lessons.

Harper Lee

Remember this also: it's always easy to look back and see what we were, yesterday, ten years ago. It is hard to see what we are. If you can master that trick, you'll get along.

Harper Lee

The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.

Harper Lee

If you did not want much, there was plenty.

Harper Lee

I need a watchman to tell me this is what a man says but this is what he means, to draw a line down the middle and say here is this justice and there is that justice and make me understand the difference. (Harper Lee)

Sometimes we have to kill a little so we can live.

Harper Lee

Now, 75 years [after], in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. [Open Letter,, July 2006].

Harper Lee

Autumn was her happiest season.

Harper Lee

The only thing I'm afraid of about this country is that its government will someday become so monstrous that the smallest person in it will be trampled underfoot, and then it wouldn't be worth living in.

Harper Lee

But a man who has lived by truth-and you have believed in what he has lived-he does not leave you merely wary when he fails you, he leaves you with nothing. I think that is why I'm nearly out of my mind.

Harper Lee

Don't push her. Let her go at her own speed. Push her and every mule in the county'd be easier to live with.

Harper Lee

I was taught never to take advantage of anybody who was less fortunate than myself, whether he be less fortunate in brains, wealth, or social position; it meant anybody...

Harper Lee

I guess it's like an airplane: they're the drag and we're the thrust, together we make the thing fly. Too much of us and we're nose-heavy, too much of them and we're tail-heavy-it's a matter of balance.

Harper Lee

Go away, the old buildings said. There is no place for you here. You are not wanted. We have secrets.

Harper Lee

What does a bigot do when he meets someone who challenges his opinions? He doesn't give. He stays rigid. Doesn't even try to listen, just lashes out. (Harper Lee)

You damn morphodite, I'll kill you!

Harper Lee

Equal rights for all, special privileges for none.

Harper Lee

Your name's longer'n you are.

Harper Lee

I think I'll be a clown when I get grown," said Dill. "Yes, sir, a clown.... There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off." "You got it backwards, Dill," said Jem. "Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them." "Well, I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.

Harper Lee

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Harper Lee

Harper Lee - Image

Occupation: American Novelist
Born: April 28, 1926
Died: February 19, 2016
Quotes count: 151
Wikipedia: Harper Lee

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