The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Quotes

The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. 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.

Huck was always willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital, for he had a troublesome super-abundance of that sort of time which is not money.

Who knows, he may grow up to be President someday, unless they hang him first!" Aunt Polly about Tom Sawyer.

Saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young, the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom, and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond the village and above, it was green with vegetation, and it lay just far enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.

What's your name?" "Becky Thatcher. What's yours? Oh, I know. It's Thomas Sawyer." "That's the name they lick me by. I'm Tom when I'm good. You call me Tom, will you?" "Yes.

Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of this scene.

They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than President of the United States forever.

A brown spotted lady-bug climbed the dizzy height of a grass blade, and Tom bent down close to it and said, "Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children's alone," and she took wing and went off to see about it -- which did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was credulous about conflagrations, and he had practised upon its simplicity more than once.

Homely truth is unpalatable.

Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop - that is, with a marriage; but when he writes about juveniles, he must stop where he best can.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.

What a curious kind of fool a girl is. Never been licked in school. What's a licking?.

He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though—and loathed him.

The choir always tittered and whispered all through service. There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred, but I have forgotten where it was, now. It was a great many years ago, and I can scarcely remember anything about it, but I think it was in some foreign country.

So endeth this chronicle. It being strictly a history of a boy, it must stop here; the story could not go much further without becoming the history of a man.