Nell Harper Lee (April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016) was an American novelist best known for his 1960 novel “To Kill a Mockingbird”. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and became a classic of modern American literature. Let’s read our collection of harper lee quotes for inspiration.
Things are always better in the morning.
– Harper Lee
Best Harper Lee Quotes
1. “Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” – Harper Lee
2. “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” – Harper Lee
3. “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” – Harper Lee
4. “Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.” – Harper Lee
5. “People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.” – Harper Lee
6. “People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.” – Harper Lee
7. “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.” – Harper Lee
8. “The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.” – Harper Lee
9. “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” – Harper Lee
10. “Try fighting with your head for a change … it’s a good one, even if it does resist learning.” – Harper Lee
11. “Writing is something you’ll never learn in any university or at any school. It’s something that is within you, and if it isn’t there, nothing can put it there.” – Harper Lee
12. “Writing is a process of self-discipline you must learn before you can call yourself a writer. There are people who write, but I think they’re quite different from people who must write.” – Harper Lee
13. “A man can condemn his enemies, but it’s wiser to know them.” – Harper Lee
14. “Don’t you study about other folks’s business till you take care of your own.” – Harper Lee
15. “Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re not attracting attention with it.” – Harper Lee
16. “I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.” – Harper Lee
17. “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 faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles ’em.” – Harper Lee
18. “Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself…It’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.” – Harper Lee
19. “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.” – Harper Lee
20. “As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he’ll look for his lessons.” – Harper Lee
21. “Things are never as bad as they seem.” – Harper Lee
22. “You can’t really get to know a person until you get in their shoes and walk around in them.” – Harper Lee
23. “If you did not want much, there was plenty.” – Harper Lee
24. “I was taught never to take advantage of anybody who was less fortunate than myself, whether he be less fortunate in brains, wealth, or social position; it meant anybody…” – Harper Lee
25. “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.” – Harper Lee
26. “It’s better to be silent than to be a fool.” – Harper Lee
27. “As a reader I loathe introductions. Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity.” – Harper Lee
28. “When you’re at the top, there’s only one way to go.” – Harper Lee
29. “Everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowing.” – Harper Lee
30. “People don’t like to have somebody knowing more than they do. It aggravates them.” – Harper Lee
31. “I’m still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries.” – Harper Lee
32. “It’s not necessary to tell all you know.” – Harper Lee
33. “Sometimes it’s better to bend the law a little in special cases.” – Harper Lee
34. “Nothin’s real scary except in books.” – Harper Lee
35. “I do my best to love everybody.” – Harper Lee
36. “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.” – Harper Lee
37. “Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel.” – Harper Lee
38. “Writing is simply something you must do. It’s rather like virtue in that it is its own reward.” – Harper Lee
39. “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, he is trash.” – Harper Lee
40. “You rarely win, but sometimes you do.” – Harper Lee
