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, Chapter 9, spoken by the character Atticus
Harper LeeI never thought Jem’d be the one to lose his head over this—thought I’d have more trouble with you.”
I said I didn’t see why we had to keep our heads anyway, that nobody I knew at school
had to keep his head about anything.
“Scout,” said Atticus, “when summer comes you’ll have to keep your head about far worse things… it’s not fair for you and Jem, I know that, but sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down—well, all I can say is, when you and Jem are grown, maybe you’ll look back on this with some compassion and some feeling that I didn’t let you down. This case, Tom Robinson’s case, is something that goes to the essence of a man’s conscience—Scout, I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help that man.
I didn't know how you were going to do it, but from now on I'll never worry about what'll become of you, son, you'll always have an idea. Son, I can't tell you what you're going to be--an engineer, a lawyer, or a portrait painter. You've perpetrated a near libel here in the front yard. We've got to disguise this fellow." - Atticus Finch
Harper LeeWell, did you know he's the best checker-player in this town? Why, down at the Landing when we were coming up, Atticus Finch could beat everybody on both sides of the river." "Miss Maudie, Jem and me beat him all the time." "It's about time you found out it's because he lets you. Did you know he can play a Jew's Harp?
Harper LeeShe'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.
Harper LeeTags: lady gentelman older-people
You aren’t really a nigger-lover, then, are you?”
“I certainly am. 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. So don’t let Mrs. Dubose get you down. She has enough troubles of her own.
Tags: classics
Jem,” he said, “are you responsible for this?”
“Yes sir.”
“Why’d you do it?”
Jem said softly, “She said you lawed for niggers and trash.”
“You did this because she said that?”
Jem’s lips moved, but his, “Yes sir,” was inaudible.
“Son, I have no doubt that you’ve been annoyed by your contemporaries about me
lawing for niggers, as you say, but to do something like this to a sick old lady is
inexcusable. I strongly advise you to go down and have a talk with Mrs. Dubose,” said
Atticus. “Come straight home afterward.”
Jem did not move.
“Go on, I said.”
I followed Jem out of the livingroom. “Come back here,” Atticus said to me. I came
back.
Atticus picked up the Mobile Press and sat down in the rocking chair Jem had
vacated. For the life of me, I did not understand how he could sit there in cold blood and
read a newspaper when his only son stood an excellent chance of being murdered with
a Confederate Army relic. Of course Jem antagonized me sometimes until I could kill
him, but when it came down to it he was all I had. Atticus did not seem to realize this, or
if he did he didn’t care.
I hated him for that, but when you are in trouble you become easily tired: soon I was
hiding in his lap and his arms were around me.
“You’re mighty big to be rocked,” he said.
“You don’t care what happens to him,” I said. “You just send him on to get shot at
when all he was doin‘ was standin’ up for you.”
Atticus pushed my head under his chin. “It’s not time to worry yet,” he said.
The witnesses for the state, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb
County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical
confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption—the evil assumption—that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption one associates with minds of their caliber. Which, gentlemen, we know is in itself a lie as black as Tom Robinson’s skin, a lie I do not have to point out to you. You know the truth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women—black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. 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.
Tags: classics
It was Miss Stephanie’s pleasure to tell us: this morning Mr. Bob Ewell stopped Atticus on the post office corner, spat in his face, and told him he’d get him if it took the rest of
his life.
You think about that,” Miss Maudie was saying. “It was no accident. I was sittin‘ there on the porch last night, waiting. I waited and waited to see you all come down the sidewalk, and as I waited I thought, Atticus Finch won’t win, he can’t win, but he’s the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case like that. And I thought to myself, well, we’re making a step—it’s just a baby-step, but it’s a step.”
“‘t’s all right to talk like that—can’t any Christian judges an’ lawyers make up for heathen juries,” Jem muttered.
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