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To Kill A Mockingbird Quotes

“I remember when my daddy gave me that gun. He told me that I should never point it at anything in the house; and that he'd rather I'd shoot at tin cans in the backyard. But he said that sooner or later he supposed the temptation to go after birds would be too much, and that I could shoot all the blue jays I wanted—if I could hit 'em; but to remember it was a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
— Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird
Tagged: Guns, Sin, Temptation, Mockingbird
“Atticus said naming people after Confederate generals made slow steady drinkers.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Tagged: Confederacy, Civil War
“I know now what he was trying to do, but Atticus was only a man. It takes a woman to do that kind of work.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Tagged: Women's Strength
“Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Tagged: Generosity
“Thus we came to know Dill as a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“But I never figured out how Atticus knew I was listening, and it was not until many years later that I realized he wanted me to hear every word he said.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“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. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Tagged: Failure, Disappointment
“Slowly but surely I began to see the pattern of questions: from questions that Mr.Gilmer did not deem sufficiently irrelevant or immaterial to object to, Atticus was quietly building up before the jury the picture of the Ewell's home life.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“As I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system — that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. 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, To Kill a Mockingbird
“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.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Each child was supposed to clip an item from a newspaper, absorb its contents, and reveal them to the class. This practice allegedly overcame a variety of evils: standing in front of his fellows encouraged good posture and gave a child poise; delivering a short talk made him word-conscious; learning his current event strengthened his memory; being singled out made him more than ever anxious to return to the Group.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Mount Everest: throughout my early life, she was cold and there.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“From now on it’ll be everybody less one—”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“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.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“When the new wore off his grandfather’s watch, and carrying it became a day’s burdensome task, Jem no longer felt the necessity of ascertaining the hour every five minutes.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“"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, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Atticus said that Jem was trying hard to forget something, but what he was really doing was storing it away for a while, until enough time passed. Then he would be able to think about it and sort things out. When he was able to think about it, Jem would be himself again.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“That’s because you can’t hold something in your mind but a little while, said Jem. It’s different with grown folks, we—”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“reasonable men, they went because we were there. There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn’t be fair if they tried.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“"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." That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.
“Your father's right," she said. "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. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“"An' they chased him 'n' never could catch him 'cause they didn't know what he looked like, an' Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those things... Atticus, he was real nice..."
"Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."”
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
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