Tom Sawyer

By Mark Twain

QUOTATION: Tom took his whipping and went back to his seat not at all broken-hearted, for he thought it was possible that he had unknowingly upset the ink on the spelling-book himself, in some skylarking bout—he had denied it for form’s sake and because it was custom, and had stuck to the denial from principle.
ATTRIBUTION: Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910), U.S. author. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, ch. 20 (1876).

QUOTATION: Huck was always willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital, for he had a troublesome superabundance of that sort of time which is not money.
ATTRIBUTION: Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910), U.S. author. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, ch. 25 (1876).

QUOTATION: The next moment he was “showing off” with all his might—cuffing boys, pulling hair, making faces—in a word, using every art that seemed likely to fascinate a girl and win her applause.
ATTRIBUTION: Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910), U.S. author. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, ch. 4 (1876).

QUOTATION: The boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements, and went off grieving that there were no outlaws any more, and wondering what modern civilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss. They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than President of the United States forever.
ATTRIBUTION: Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910), U.S. author. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, ch. 8 (1876).

QUOTATION: She was so overcome by the splendor of his achievement that she took him into the closet and selected a choice apple and delivered it to him, along with an improving lecture upon the added value and flavor a treat took to itself when it came without sin through virtuous effort. And while she closed with a Scriptural flourish, he “hooked” a doughnut.
ATTRIBUTION: Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910), U.S. author. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, ch. 3 (1876).

QUOTATION: This nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound off with a sermon so destructive of all hope to non-Presbyterians that it took the first prize. This composition was considered to be the very finest effort of the evening.... It may be remarked, in passing, that the number of compositions in which the word “beauteous” was over-fondled, and human experience referred to as “life’s page,” was up to the usual average.
ATTRIBUTION: Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910), U.S. author. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, ch. 21 (1876).

QUOTATION: He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
ATTRIBUTION: Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910), U.S. author. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, ch. 2 (1876).

QUOTATION: As the two boys walked sorrowing along, they made a new compact to stand by each other and be brothers and never separate till death relieved them of their troubles. Then they began to lay their plans. Joe was for being a hermit, and living on crusts in a remote cave, and dying, some time, of cold, and want, and grief; but after listening to Tom, he conceded that there were some conspicuous advantages about a life of crime, and so he consented to be a pirate.
ATTRIBUTION: Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910), U.S. author. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, ch. 13 (1876).

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