Quotes from Harper Lee

Non è necessario sfoggiare bravura, non è signorile; e poi alla gente non piace vedersi attorno persone che ne sanno più di loro: li irrita. Non riuscirai mai a cambiare le persone limitandoti a parlare bene, bisogna che siano loro a desiderare di imparare; se non lo desiderano, non puoi far niente: non ti resta che tenere la bocca chiusa o parlare come loro.

you can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family, an' they're still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge 'em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don't." "That's

No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat. Try fighting with your head for a change . . . it's a good one, even if it does resist learning." "Atticus, are we going to win it?" "No, honey." "Then, why—" "Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win," Atticus said. "You

Prima di vivere con gli altri, bisogna che viva con me stesso: la coscienza è l'unica cosa che non debba conformarsi al volere della maggioranza.

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

Let the dead bury the dead...

Before Jem looks at anyone else, he looks at me, and I have 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.

He declined to let us take our air rifles to the Landing (I had already begun to think of shooting Francis)

Ustedes saben la verdad, y la verdad es que algunos negros mienten, algunos negros son inmorales, algunos negros no merecen la confianza de estar cerca de las mujeres... blancas o negras. Pero ésta es una verdad que se aplica a toda la especie humana y no a una raza particular de hombres.

Puede parecer que uno forma parte de algo que en apariencia no es del todo bueno, pero no te arrogues el derecho de juzgarlo a menos que también conozcas sus motivos.

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

Uno puede condenar a sus enemigos, pero es más prudente conocerlos.

I was exhilarated. So many things had happened so fast I felt it would take years to sort them out

I'll never worry about what'll become of you, son, you'll always have an idea.

She had never told us on, had never played cat-and-mouse with us, she was not at all interested in our private lives. She was our friend.

Atticus said no, it wasn't that sort of thing, that there were other ways of making people into ghosts.

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.

He declared Egyptians walked that way; I said if they did I didn't see how they got anything done, but Jem said they accomplished more than the Americans ever did, they invented toilet paper and perpetual embalming, and asked where would we be today if they hadn't? Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.

Jem, she's old and ill. You can't hold her responsible for what she says and does.

when I said I could do nothing in a dress, she said I wasn't supposed to be doing things that required pants.

Hadn't we better go to the living room?

Atticus was saying, "With people like us—that's our share of the bill. We generally get the juries we deserve. Our stout Maycomb citizens aren't interested, in the first place. In the second place, they're afraid. Then

It ain't honest but it's mighty helpful to folks...but you see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that's the way I want to live.

I do my best to love everybody . . . I'm hard put, sometimes—baby, 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.