Love whom you will but marry your own kind was a dictum amounting to instinct within her.
But the white supremacists fear reason, because they know cold reason beats them. Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.
We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe. Some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cupcakes than others; some are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men.
Well, coming out of the courthouse that night Miss Gates was-she goin’ down the steps in front of us, you musta not seen her- she was talking with Miss Stephen Crawford. I heard her say it’s time somebody taught ‘em a lesson, they were gettin’ way above themselves, an’ the next thing they think they can do is marry us. Jem, how can you hate Hitler so bad an’ then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home-.
I willed myself to stay awake, but the rain was so soft and the room was so warm and his voice was so deep and his knee was so snug that I slept.
Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between.
What happened after that had a dreamlike quality: in a dream I saw the jury return, moving like underwater swimmers, and Judge Taylor’s voice came from far away, and was tiny. I saw something only a lawyer’s child could be expected to see, could be expected to watch for, and it was like watching Atticus walk into the street, raise a rifle to his shoulder and pull the trigger, but watching all the time knowing that the gun was empty.
We saw Uncle Jack every Christmas, and every Christmas he yelled across the street for Miss Maudie to come marry him. Miss Mauide would yell back, “Call a little louder, Jack Finch, and they’ll hear you the post office, I haven’t heard you yet!” Jem and I thought this a strange way to ask for a lady’s hand in marriage, but then again Uncle Jack was rather strange.
You are too young to understand it,” she said, “but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of – oh, of your father.
If we followed our feelings all the time, we’d be like cats chasin’ their tails.
I’m only trying to make you see beyond men’s acts to their motives. A man can appear to be a part of something not-so-good on its face, but don’t take it upon yourself to judge him unless you know his motives as well. A man can be boiling inside, but he knows a mild answer works better than showing his rage. A man can condemn his enemies, but it’s wiser to know them.
You don’t have to learn much out of books, it’s like if you want to learn about cows, you go milk one.
Atticus killed several birds with one stone when he read to his children, and would probably have caused a child psychologist considerable dismay: he read to Jem and Jean Louise whatever he happened to be reading, and the children grew up possessed of an obscure erudition. They cut their back teeth on military history, Bills to Be Enacted into Laws, True Detective Mysteries, The Code of Alabama, the Bible, and Palgrave’s Golden Treasury.
I’m no different from any other woman, and the wrong man would turn me into a screamin’ shrew in record time.
It ain’t time to worry yet. I’ll let you know when.
I had a feeling that I shouldn’t be here listening to this sinful man who had mixed children and didn’t care who knew it, but he was fascinating. I had never encountered a being who deliberately perpetrated fraud against himself. But why had he entrusted us with his deepest secret? I asked him why. ‘Because you’re children and you can unterstand it,’ he said.
Our gods are remote from us, Jean Louise. They must never descend to human level.
Alexandra was one of those people who had gone through life at no cost to themselves; had she been obliged to pay any emotional bills during her earthly life, Jean Louise could imagine her stopping at the check-in desk in heaven and demanding a refund.
As she welcomed him silently to the human race, the stab of discovery made her tremble a little.
I am their blood and bones, I have dug in this ground, this is my home. But I am not their blood, the ground doesn’t care who digs it, I am a stranger at a cocktail party.