“Will suspected Jem was in fact cleverer than he was himself - but he lacked Will's tendency to assume the absolute worst about people and proceed from there.”
“He soon recognized the fact that the stimulus proceeded from the idea to be in the power of a woman rather than from the act of violence itself.”
“A man is perfectly entitled to laugh at a thing because he happens to find it incomprehensible. What he has no right to do is to laugh at it as incomprehensible, and then criticise it as if he comprehended it. The very fact of its unfamiliarity and mystery ought to set him thinking about the deeper causes that make people so different from himself, and that without merely assuming that they must be inferior to himself.”
“Seeing that he owns absolutely nothing to ‘repay’ his debt, ‘his own consciousness’ of the fact ‘that he is himself the very substance’ of debt, so must he ‘repay’ with himself, so must he ‘return’ himself to Him Who owns him absolutely.”
“Jem always said that Will rushed toward the end of a mission rather than proceeding in a measured manner, and that one must look at the next step on the path ahead, rather than the destination in the distance, or one would never reach one’s goal. Will closed his eyes for a moment. He knew that Jem was right, but it was hard to remember, when the goal that he sought was the girl that he loved.”
“Atticus said that Jem was trying hard to forget something, but what he was really doing was storing it away for a while, until enough time passed. Then he would be able to think about it and sort things out. When he was able to think about it, Jem would be himself again.”