Atticus Finch on Courage

“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.”

–Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird

Maximus on Honor

“What we do in life echoes in eternity.”

–Maximus, Gladiator (2000)

G.K. Chesterton on Atheism

“When a Man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything.”

–G.K. Chesterton

Carl Sandburg on the Measure of a Man

“A tree is best measured when it is down–and so it is with people.”

–Carl Sandburg, Lincoln in the War Years

Hub McCann on Passion

“I’m Hub McCann. I’ve fought in two world wars, and countless smaller ones on three continents. I’ve led thousands of men into battle with everything from horses and swords to artillery and tanks. I’ve seen the headwaters of the Nile and tribes of natives no white men had ever seen before. I’ve won and lost a dozen fortunes, killed many men, and loved only one woman with a passion a flea like you could never begin to understand. That’s who I am.”

–Hub McCann (Robert Duvall) in Secondhand Lions (2003)