The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Quotes

Quote 1: "'My! Look behind you, Aunt!'" Chapter 1, pg. 2

Quote 2: "He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though--and loathed him." Chapter 1, pg. 4

Quote 3: "'Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?'" Chapter 2, pg. 12

Quote 4: "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." Chapter 2, pg. 13

Quote 5: "...each blue ticket was pay for two verses of the recitation. Ten blue tickets equaled a red one, and could be exchanged for it; ten red tickets equaled a yellow one; for ten yellow tickets the superintendent gave a very plainly bound Bible (worthy forty cents in those easy times) to the pupil. How many of my readers would have the industry and application to memorize two thousand verses, even for a Dore' Bible?" Chapter 4, pg. 24

Quote 6: "Monday morning found Tom miserable." Chapter 6, pg. 35

Quote 7: "You only just tell a boy you won't ever have anybody but him, ever ever ever, and then you kiss and that's all. Anybody can do it." Chapter 7, pg. 49

Quote 8: "They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than President of the United States forever." Chapter 8, pg. 57

Quote 9: "Five years ago you drove me away from your father's kitchen one night, when I come to ask for something to eat, and you said I warn't there for any good; and when I swore I'd get even with you if it took a hundred years, your father had me jailed for a vagrant. Did you think I'd forget? The Injun blood ain't in me for nothing. And now I've got you, and you got to settle, you know!" Chapter 9, pg. 61

Quote 10: "This final feather broke the camel's back." Chapter 10, pg. 70

Quote 11: "All the 'rot' they [health magazines] contained about ventilation, and how to go to bed, and how to get up, and what to eat, and what to drink, and how much exercise to take, and what frame of mind to keep one's self in, and what sort of clothing to wear, was all gospel to her, and she never observed that her health journals of the current month customarily upset everything they had recommended the month before." Chapter 12, pg. 75

Quote 12: "'Because if he'd 'a' had one she'd 'a' burnt him out herself! She'd 'a' roasted his bowels out of him 'thout any more feeling than if he was a human!'" Chapter 12, pg. 78

Quote 13: "Plainly, here were 'two souls with but a single thought.'" Chapter 13, pg. 80

Quote 14: "Here was a gorgeous triumph; they were missed; they were mourned; hearts were breaking on their account; tears were being shed; accusing memories of unkindnesses to these poor lost lads were rising up, and unavailing regrets and remorse were being indulged: and best of all, the departed were the talk of the whole town, and the envy of all the boys, as far as this dazzling notoriety was concerned. This was fine. It was worth being a pirate, after all." Chapter 14, pg. 91

Quote 15: "'Say--boys, don't say anything about it, and some time when they're around, I'll come up to you and say, "Joe, got a pipe? I want a smoke." And you'll say, kind of careless like, as if it warn't anything, you'll say, "Yes, I got my old pipe, and another one, but my tobacker ain't very good." And I'll say, "Oh, that's all right, if it's strong enough." And then you'll out with the pipes, and we'll light up just as ca'm, and just see 'em look!'" Chapter 16, pg. 102

Quote 16: "But something informed him that if they had had any trouble they had got rid of it." Chapter 16, pg. 102

Quote 17: "The group loitered away, still recalling memories of the lost heroes, in awed voices." Chapter 17, pg. 107

Quote 18: "They had been hid in the unused gallery listening to their own funeral sermon!" Chapter 17, pg. 109

Quote 19: "Tom got more cuffs and kisses that day--according to Aunt Polly's varying moods--than he had earned before in a year; and he hardly knew which expressed the most gratefulness to God and affection to himself." Chapter 17, pg. 109

Quote 20: "'Auntie, I wish I hadn't done it--but I didn't think.'" Chapter 19, pg. 118

Quote 21: "'I could forgive the boy, now, if he'd committed a million sins!'" Chapter 19, pg. 120

Quote 22: "'All right, though; she'd like to see me in just such a fix--let her sweat it out!'" Chapter 20, pg. 122

Quote 23: "The glaring insincerity of these sermons was not sufficient to compass the banishment of the fashion from the schools, and it is not sufficient to-day; it never will be sufficient while the world stands, perhaps." Chapter 21, pg. 128

Quote 24: "'Your honor, in our remarks at the opening of this trial, we foreshadowed our purpose to prove that our client did this fearful deed while under the influence of a blind and irresponsible delirium produced by drink. We have changed our mind. We shall not offer that plea.' [Then to the clerk:] 'Call Thomas Sawyer!'" Chapter 23, pg. 139

Quote 25: "deaf-and-dumb" Chapter 26, pg. 152

Quote 26: "Number Two--under the cross." Chapter 26, pg. 155

Quote 27: "'He likes me, becuz I don't ever act as if I was above him. Sometimes I've set right down and eat with him. But you needn't tell that.'" Chapter 28, pg. 163

Quote 28: "'Damn her, maybe she's got company--there's lights, late as it is.'" Chapter 29, pg. 168

Quote 29: "...if the beam had been wholly cut away Injun Joe could not have squeezed his body under the door, and he knew it. So he had hacked that place in order to be doing something--in order to pass the weary time--in order to employ his tortured faculties." Chapter 33, pg. 191

Quote 30: "[They] confessed that they had had almost as satisfactory a time at the funeral as they could have had at the hanging." Chapter 33, pg. 192

Quote 31: "There--what did I tell you? Half of it's Huck's and half of it's mine!" Chapter 34, pg. 203

Quote 32: "'Don't talk about it, Tom. I've tried it, and it don't work; it don't work, Tom. It ain't for me; I ain't used to it. The widder's good to me, and friendly; but I can't stand them ways. She makes me git up just at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they comb me all to thunder; she won't let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear them blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom; they don't seem to let any air git through 'em, somehow; and they're so rotten nice that I can't set down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher's; I hain't slid on a cellar-door for--well, it 'pears to be years; I got to go to church and sweat and sweat--I hate them ornery sermons! I can't ketch a fly in there, I can't chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell--everything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it.'" Chapter 35, pg. 205

Quote 33: "When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop--that is, with a marriage; but when he writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can." Chapter 35, pg. 208