Harper Lee citations

Page 3

“Scout Finch, juvenile desperado, hellraiser extraordinary.”

“Avec lui, la vie était banale, sans lui, elle devenait insupportable.”

“Mais ce pays met en application l’idée que tous les hommes naissent égaux dans une institution humaine qui fait du pauvre l’égal d’un Rockefeller, du crétin l’égal d’un Einstein,
et de l’ignorant l’égal de n’importe quel directeur de lycée. Cette institution, messieurs les jurés, c’est le tribunal.”

“Le courage, c’est savoir que tu pars battu, mais d’agir quand même sans s’arrêter”

“Avant de vivre en paix avec les autres, je dois vivre en paix avec moi-même. La seule chose qui ne doive pas céder à la loi de la majorité est la conscience de l’individu.”

“Ce n’est pas parce qu’on est battu d’avance qu’il ne faut pas essayer de gagner.”

“Le préjugé - un terme péjoratif - et la foi - un terme noble - ont quelque chose en commun : ils commencent tous les deux où la raison s'arrête.”

“Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.”

“He turned out the light and went into Jem's room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.”

“See there?" Jem was scowling triumphantly. "Nothin' to it. I swear, Scout, sometimes you act so much like a girl its mortifyin”

“I wonder how much of the day I spend just callin' after you.”

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

“You can't really get to know a person until you get in their shoes and walk around in them.”

“I shall never marry, Atticus."
"Why?"
"I might have children.”

“Cry about the simple hell people give other people- without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they're people too.”

“People don’t like to have somebody knowing more than they do. It aggravates them.”

“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.”

“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 you did not want much, there was plenty.”

“You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”

“Scout, I´m telling you for the last time, shut your trap or go home - I declare to the Lord you´re gettin´ more like a girl every day!”
With that, I had no option but to join them.”

“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.”

“Everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowing.”

“You see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that's the way I want to live.”

“When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.”

“Remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

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

“Don’t you study about other folks’s business till you take care of your own.”

“Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives.”

“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]”

“Nothin’s real scary except in books.”

“One must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can't do anything about them.”

“Autumn was her happiest season.”

“I try to give'em a reason, you see. It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason.”

“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.”

“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.”