Memorable Things Characters Have Said: Quotes from Book Characters that Have Stuck with Me

I've obtained much of my knowledge of the world from book characters. I forget most of the time that they are simply characters in a book...

Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird is wildly inspiring to me:

“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

“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.”

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The White Queen in Alice in Wonderland has surprising wisdom.

Alice laughed. `There's no use trying,' she said: `one CAN'T believe impossible things.'

`I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. `When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. 

                                                                  ─•~❉᯽❉~•─

The Little Prince in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's book of the same name is an amazingly clever fellow:

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” 

─•~❉᯽❉~•─

Susila, in Aldous Huxley's Island, knows a lot about living, too:

"It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling…"

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Miss Emily Maxwell, Rebecca's teacher, in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin offers great wisdom:

“Look at the pebbles in the bottom of the pool, Miss Emily, so round and smooth and shining." 

"Yes, but where did they get that beautiful polish, that satin skin, that lovely shape, Rebecca? Not in the still pool lying on the sands. It was never there that their angles were rubbed off and their rough surfaces polished, but in the strife and warfare of running waters. They have jostled against other pebbles, dashed against sharp rocks, and now we look at them and call them beautiful.”

─•~❉᯽❉~•─

Adunni in Abi Daré's The Girl with the Louding Voice won my heart when she said this:

“My mama say education will give me a voice. I want more than just a voice, Ms. Tia. I want a louding voice,” I say. “I want to enter a room and people will hear me even before I open my mouth to be speaking. I want to live in this life and help many people so that when I grow old and die, I will still be living through the people I am helping.”

─•~❉᯽❉~•─

Even a monster can offer us wisdom, like the monster in Patrick Ness' book, A Monster Calls:

"If you speak the truth," the monster whispered in his ear, "you will be able to face whatever comes."

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.