Christa B > Christa's Quotes

“I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”
― Willa Cather, My Ántonia

“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 see it through no matter what.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“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.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“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, To Kill a Mockingbird

“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, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”
― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman

“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 cakes than others- some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of men.
But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal- there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Things are never as bad as they seem.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“It's not necessary to tell all you know. It's not ladylike -- in the second place, folks don't like to have someone around knowin' more than they do. It aggravates them. Your not gonna change any of them by talkin' right, they've got to want to learn themselves, and when they don't want to learn there's nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“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

“There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious.”
― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman

“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.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“[T]he time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise. They don’t need you when they’re right”
― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman

“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, Go Set a Watchman

“As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don't think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, 'I'm probably no better than you, but I'm certainly your equal.”
― Harper Lee

“The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.”
― Harper Lee

“Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“People don’t like to have somebody knowing more than they do. It aggravates them.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“If you did not want much, there was plenty.”
― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman

“A child, more than all other gifts
That earth can offer to declining man,
Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts."
—WORDSWORTH.”
― George Eliot, Silas Marner

“...There's nothing kills a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.”
― George Eliot, Silas Marner

“When a man turns a blessing from his door, it falls to them as take it in.”
― George Eliot, Silas Marner

“He seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without reflection. Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of life. Silas's hand satisfied itself with throwing the shuttle, and his eye with seeing the little squares in the cloth complete themselves under his effort. Then there were the calls of hunger; and Silas, in his solitude, had to provide his own breakfast, dinner, and supper, to fetch his own water from the well, and put his own kettle on the fire; and all these immediate promptings helped, along with the weaving, to reduce his life to the unquestioning activity of a spinning insect. He hated the thought of the past; there was nothing that called out his love and fellowship toward the strangers he had come amongst; and the future was all dark, for there was no Unseen Love that cared for him. Thought was arrested by utter bewilderment, not its old narrow pathway was closed, and affection seemed to have died under the bruise that had fallen on its keenest nerves.”
― George Eliot, Silas Marner

“Even people whose lives have been made various by learning sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible - nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas - where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories.”
― George Eliot, Silas Marner

“The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.”
― George Eliot, Silas Marner