Nelle Harper Lee (b. April 28, 1926) is an American novelist widely known for her 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird which deals with the racism she observed as a child in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. Though Lee only published this single book for half a century, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature. Lee has received numerous honorary degrees, and declined to speak on each occasion. Lee assisted close friend Truman Capote in his research for the book In Cold Blood (1966). (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up.
As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don't think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, 'I'm probably no better than you, but I'm certainly your equal.'
Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it, hotheadedness isn't.
But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal- there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honourable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levellers, and in our courts all men are created equal.
Every mob in every little Southern town is always made up of people you know- doesn't say much for them, does it?
Folks don't like to have somebody around knowin' more than they do. It aggravates 'em. You're not gonna change any of them by talkin' right, they've got to want to learn themselves, and when they don't want to learn there's nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.
Havin' a gun around's an invitation to somebody to shoot you.
I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.
I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.
I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year.
I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.
It's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you.
Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere.
Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.
Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.
Nothing is more deadly than a deserted, waiting street.
People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.
People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.
She was born in the Objective case.
She's an old lady and she's ill. You just hold your head high and be a gentleman. Whatever she says to you, it's your job not to let her make you mad.
Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who- who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one.
The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.
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.
The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets-
There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us.
There's just some kind of men you have to shoot before you can say hidy to 'em. Even then, they ain't worth the bullet it takes to shoot 'em.
Things are always better in the morning.
Things are never as bad as they seem.
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness' sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, an evasion simply muddles 'em.
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.
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(April 28 is also the birthday of Jay Leno and Terry Pratchett.)
Categories: Harper Lee, Quotes of the day
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