literary masterpiece

As I sit twidling my thumbs waiting for my cousin to try out her mountain of jewellery before the eve of her engagement, I decide to read through some of my favourite quotes from my favourite book "to kill a mockingbird" by harper lee. The story which centers around a white man's fight for a wronged black men told through the eyes of his six year old daughter is in my opinion a master piece beyond compare. The principal characters are Atticus Finch the lawyer who defends the black man Tom Robinson who has been accused of rape of a white girl Mayella Ewell by her father Bob Ewell. The story revolves around the white men's injustice and the realisation of that by Atticus's children Jem and Scout. Here are some memorable quotes from that book.

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived. -Scout

They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience. -Atticus

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 you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. -Atticus

She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl. -Scout


So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses.... That proves something - that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children. -Atticus


"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."


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. As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash. -Atticus


I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks. -Scout


The sixth grade seemed to please him from the beginning: he went through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me - he tried to walk flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back of him, putting one foot behind the other. 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. -Scout


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, and evasion simply muddles 'em. -Atticus

Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it. -Atticus


Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand. -Atticus

so if you haven't read the book, do so :):)