character

Huckleberry Finn Quotes

97 of the best book quotes from Huckleberry Finn
01
“Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”
02
“Jim said that bees won’t sting idiots, but I didn’t believe that, because I tried them lots of times myself and they wouldn’t sting me.”
03
“I couldn’t bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn’t think about nothing else.”
04
“What’s the use you learning to do right when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?”
05
“Stars and shadows ain’t good to see by.”
06
“You can’t pray a lie – I found that out.”
07
“I don’t want no better book than what your face is.”
08
“All kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur as I can make out.”
09
“All right then, I’ll go to hell”
10
Tom told me what his plan was, and I see in a minute it was worth fifteen of mine for style, and would make Jim just as free a man as mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides. So I was satisfied, and said we would waltz in on it.
11
“I was mighty down-hearted; so I made up my mind I wouldn’t ever go anear that house again, because I reckoned I was to blame, somehow.”
12
“That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don’t want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain’t no disgrace. That was my fix exactly.”
13
“I knowed very well why [the words] wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all.”
14
“Well, everybody does it that way, Huck.” “Tom, I am not everybody.”
15
“Huckleberry was cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town because he was idle, and lawless, and vulgar, and bad - and because all their children admired him so, and delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like him.”
16
“That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.”
17
“Look here, if you’re telling the truth you needn’t be afraid--nobody’ll hurt you.”
18
“It’s the little things that smooths people’s roads the most.”
19
“A person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.”
20
“There warn’t anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn’t any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it’s cool. If you notice, most folks don’t go to church only when they’ve got to: but a hog is different.”
21
″‘Hucky, do you believe the dead people like it for us to be here?’ ‘I wisht I knowed. It’s awful solemn like, _ain’t_ it?‘”
Source: Chapter 9, Paragraph 7
22
“And the two clung together with beating hearts.”
Source: Chapter 9, Paragraph 20
23
“Tom, we got to keep mum. You know that. That Injun devil wouldn’t make any more of drownding us than a couple of cats, if we was to squeak ‘bout this and they didn’t hang him. Now, look-a-here, Tom, less take and swear to one another—that’s what we got to do—swear to keep mum.”
Source: Chapter 10, Paragraph 24
24
The spirit of adventure rose in the boys’ souls once more.
Source: Chapter 10, Paragraph 68
25
Then Huckleberry and Tom stood dumb and staring, and heard the stony-hearted liar reel off his serene statement, they expecting every moment that the clear sky would deliver God’s lightnings upon his head, and wondering to see how long the stroke was delayed.
Source: Chapter 11, Paragraph 21
26
And when he had finished and still stood alive and whole, their wavering impulse to break their oath and save the poor betrayed prisoner’s life faded and vanished away, for plainly this miscreant had sold himself to Satan and it would be fatal to meddle with the property of such a power as that.
Source: Chapter 11, Paragraph 21
27
″‘Tom Sawyer, the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main. Name your names.’ ‘Huck Finn the Red-Handed, and Joe Harper the Terror of the Seas.‘”
Source: Chapter 13, Paragraph 12
28
“anyways, I’m suited. I don’t want nothing better’n this. I don’t ever get enough to eat, gen’ally—and here they can’t come and pick at a feller and bullyrag him so.”
Source: Chapter 13, Paragraph 40
29
“Well, we’ll let the crybaby go home to his mother, won’t we, Huck? Poor thing—does it want to see its mother? And so it shall. You like it here, don’t you, Huck? We’ll stay, won’t we?”
Source: Chapter 16, Paragraph 17
30
“Talk? Well, it’ís just Muff Potter, Muff Potter, Muff Potter all the time. It keeps me in a sweat, constant, so’s I want to hide som’ers.”
Source: Chapter 23, Paragraph 19
31
“Most always—most always. He ain’t no account; but then he hain’t ever done anything to hurt anybody. Just fishes a little, to get money to get drunk on—and loafs around considerable; but lord, we all do that—leastways most of us—preachers and such like. But he’s kind of good—he give me half a fish, once, when there warn’t enough for two; and lots of times he’s kind of stood by me when I was out of luck.”
Source: Chapter 23, Paragraph 21
32
“You’ve been mighty good to me, boys—better’n anybody else in this town. And I don’t forget it, I don’t. Often I says to myself, says I, ‘I used to mend all the boys’ kites and things, and show ‘em where the good fishin’ places was, and befriend ‘em what I could, and now they’ve all forgot old Muff when he’s in trouble; but Tom don’t, and Huck don’t—_they_ don’t forget him,’ says I, ‘and I don’t forget them.‘”
Source: Chapter 23, Paragraph 31
33
“Tom, I don’t like to fool around much where there’s dead people. A body’s bound to get into trouble with ‘em, sure.”
Source: Chapter 25, Paragraph 95
34
“My boy, don’t be afraid of me. I wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head for all the world. No—I’d protect you—I’d protect you.”
Source: Chapter 30, Paragraph 34
35
“Poor Huck was too distressed to smile, but the old man laughed loud and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot, and ended by saying that such a laugh was money in a-man’s pocket, because it cut down the doctor’s bill like everything.”
Source: Chapter 30, Paragraph 47
36
″‘Earnest, Huck—just as earnest as ever I was in my life. Will you go in there with me and help get it out?’ ‘I bet I will! I will if it’s where we can blaze our way to it and not get lost’.”
Source: Chapter 33, Paragraph 26
37
″‘Why, it’s real bully, Tom. I believe it’s better’n to be a pirate.’ ‘Yes, it’s better in some ways, because it’s close to home and circuses and all that.‘”
Source: Chapter 33, Paragraph 49
38
“Huck’s got money. Maybe you don’t believe it, but he’s got lots of it. Oh, you needn’t smile—I reckon I can show you. You just wait a minute.”
Source: Chapter 34, Paragraph 24
39
“I got to go to church and sweat and sweat—I hate them ornery sermons!”
Source: Chapter 35, Paragraph 9
40
“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.”
Source: Chapter 35, Paragraph 9
41
“The widder wouldn’t let me smoke; she wouldn’t let me yell, she wouldn’t let me gape, nor stretch, nor scratch, before folks—”
Source: Chapter 35, Paragraph 11
42
“Looky-here, Tom, being rich ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. It’s just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead all the time.”
Source: Chapter 35, Paragraph 11
43
″‘Oh, Huck, you know I can’t do that. ‘Tain’t fair; and besides if you’ll try this thing just a while longer you’ll come to like it.’ ‘Like it! Yes—the way I’d like a hot stove if I was to set on it long enough.‘”
Source: Chapter 35, Paragraph 13
44
“The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn’t do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up.”
Source: Chapter 5, Paragraph 3
45
“Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it.”
Source: Chapter 5, Paragraph 5
46
“If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain’t sleepy—if you are anywheres where it won’t do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places.”
Source: Chapter 6, Paragraph 3
47
“They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn’ t be fair and square for the others.”
Source: Chapter 6, Paragraph 17
48
“Kill the women? No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them to the cave, and you’re always as polite as pie to them; and by-and-by they fall in love with you, and never want to go home any more.”
Source: Chapter 6, Paragraph 37
49
“I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don’t Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pork? Why can’t the widow get back her silver snuffbox that was stole? Why can’t Miss Watson fat up?”
Source: Chapter 7, Paragraph 2
50
“Shucks, it ain’t no use to talk to you, Huck Finn. You don’t seem to know anything, somehow—perfect saphead.”
Source: Chapter 7, Paragraph 16
51
“I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don’t reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever.”
Source: Chapter 8, Paragraph 1
52
“I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit.”
Source: Chapter 8, Paragraph 2
53
“You think you’re better’n your father, now, don’t you, because he can’t?”
Source: Chapter 9, Paragraph 6
54
“So there ain’t no doubt but there is something in that thing—that is, there’s something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don’t work for me, and I reckon it don’t work for only just the right kind.”
Source: Chapter 12, Paragraph 4
55
“but by-and-by it got sort of lonesome, and so I went and set on the bank and listened to the current swashing along, and counted the stars and drift logs and rafts that come down, and then went to bed; there ain’nt no better way to put in time when you are lonesome; you can’t stay so, you soon get over it.”
Source: Chapter 12, Paragraph 11
56
“Now you think it’s bad luck; but what did you say when I fetched in the snake-skin that I found on the top of the ridge day before yesterday? You said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snake-skin with my hands. Well, here’s your bad luck! We’ve raked in all this truck and eight dollars besides. I wish we could have some bad luck like this every day, Jim.”
Source: Chapter 14, Paragraph 3
57
“No, you won’t. Set down and stay where you are. I ain’t going to hurt you, and I ain’t going to tell on you, nuther. You just tell me your secret, and trust me. I’ll keep it; and, what’s more, I’ll help you. So’ll my old man if you want him to. You see, you’re a runaway ‘prentice, that’s all. It ain’t anything. There ain’t no harm in it. You’ve been treated bad, and you made up your mind to cut. Bless you, child, I wouldn’t tell on you. Tell me all about it now, that’s a good boy.”
Source: Chapter 15, Paragraph 46
58
“It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn’ t ever feel like talking loud, and it warn’t often that we laughed—only a little kind of a low chuckle.”
Source: Chapter 16, Paragraph 6
59
“Pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don’t want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain’t ever forgot.”
Source: Chapter 16, Paragraph 8
60
“Pap always said it warn’t no harm to borrow things if you was meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn’t anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it. Jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right;”
Source: Chapter 16, Paragraph 9
61
“I says to myself, there ain’t no telling but I might come to be a murderer myself yet, and then how would I like it?”
Source: Chapter 17, Paragraph 16
62
“I wished the widow knowed about it. I judged she would be proud of me for helping these rapscallions, because rapscallions and dead beats is the kind the widow and good people takes the most interest in.”
Source: Chapter 17, Paragraph 49
63
“I told Jim all about what happened inside the wreck and at the ferry-boat, and I said these kinds of things was adventures; but he said he didn’t want no more adventures.”
Source: Chapter 18, Paragraph 1
64
“And ain’t it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different from us?” “Why, mos’ sholy it is.” “Well, then, why ain’t it natural and right for a Frenchman to talk different from us? You answer me that.”
Source: Chapter 18, Paragraph 50
65
“Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck? En you ain’ dead—you ain’ drownded—you’ s back agin? It’ s too good for true, honey, it’ s too good for true. Lemme look at you chile, lemme feel o’ you. No, you ain’ dead! you’ s back agin, ‘live en soun’, jis de same ole Huck—de same ole Huck, thanks to goodness!”
Source: Chapter 19, Paragraph 19
66
“They went off and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn’t no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don’t get started right when he’s little ain’t got no show—when the pinch comes there ain’t nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat.”
Source: Chapter 20, Paragraph 43
67
“We didn’t say a word for a good while. There warn’t anything to say. We both knowed well enough it was some more work of the rattlesnake-skin; so what was the use to talk about it? It would only look like we was finding fault, and that would be bound to fetch more bad luck—-and keep on fetching it, too, till we knowed enough to keep still.”
Source: Chapter 20, Paragraph 66
68
“We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all.”
Source: Chapter 22, Paragraph 83
69
“You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.”
Source: Chapter 22, Paragraph 83
70
“We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.”
Source: Chapter 23, Paragraph 5
71
“He said we ought to bow when we spoke to him, and say “Your Grace,” or “My Lord,” or “Your Lordship”— and he wouldn’t mind it if we called him plain “Bridgewater,” which, he said, was a title anyway, and not a name; and one of us ought to wait on him at dinner, and do any little thing for him he wanted done.”
Source: Chapter 23, Paragraph 34
72
“So Jim and me set to majestying him, and doing this and that and t’other for him, and standing up till he told us we might set down. This done him heaps of good, and so he got cheerful and comfortable.”
Source: Chapter 23, Paragraph 51
73
“It didn’t take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn’t no kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. But I never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it’s the best way; then you don’t have no quarrels, and don’t get into no trouble.”
Source: Chapter 23, Paragraph 54
74
“If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way.”
Source: Chapter 23, Paragraph 54
75
“I ain’t opposed to spending money on circuses when there ain’t no other way, but there ain’t no use in wasting it on them.”
Source: Chapter 26, Paragraph 11
76
“My, you ought to seen old Henry the Eight when he was in bloom. He was a blossom. He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs.”
Source: Chapter 27, Paragraph 23
77
“The king’s duds was all black, and he did look real swell and starchy. I never knowed how clothes could change a body before. Why, before, he looked like the orneriest old rip that ever was; but now, when he’d take off his new white beaver and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that grand and good and pious that you’d say he had walked right out of the ark, and maybe was old Leviticus himself.”
Source: Chapter 28, Paragraph 5
78
“Then he turns around, blubbering, and makes a lot of idiotic signs to the duke on his hands, and blamed if he didn’t drop a carpet-bag and bust out a-crying. If they warn’t the beatenest lot, them two frauds, that ever I struck.”
Source: Chapter 28, Paragraph 48
79
“Well, the men gathered around and sympathized with them, and said all sorts of kind things to them, and carried their carpet-bags up the hill for them, and let them lean on them and cry, and told the king all about his brother’s last moments, and the king he told it all over again on his hands to the duke, and both of them took on about that dead tanner like they’d lost the twelve disciples.”
Source: Chapter 28, Paragraph 49
80
“I felt so ornery and low down and mean that I says to myself, my mind’s made up; I’ll hive that money for them or bust.”
Source: Chapter 30, Paragraph 79
81
“Blame it, I says, I might get hunted up and jailed; I’d better lay low and keep dark, and not write at all; the thing’s awful mixed now; trying to better it, I’ve worsened it a hundred times, and I wish to goodness I’d just let it alone, dad fetch the whole business!”
Source: Chapter 31, Paragraph 9
82
“Them poor things was that glad and happy it made my heart ache to see them getting fooled and lied to so,”
Source: Chapter 31, Paragraph 11
83
“Miss Mary Jane, you can’t a-bear to see people in trouble, and I can’t—most always. Tell me about it.”
Source: Chapter 32, Paragraph 2
84
“I says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many resks, though I ain’t had no experience, and can’t say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here’s a case where I’m blest if it don’t look to me like the truth is better and actuly safer than a lie.”
Source: Chapter 32, Paragraph 7
85
“I got to tell the truth, and you want to brace up, Miss Mary, because it’s a bad kind, and going to be hard to take, but there ain’t no help for it. These uncles of yourn ain’t no uncles at all; they’re a couple of frauds—regular dead-beats.”
Source: Chapter 32, Paragraph 14
86
“Oh, stop blaming yourself—it’s too bad to do it, and I won’t allow it—you couldn’t help it; it wasn’t your fault. Where did you hide it?”
Source: Chapter 32, Paragraph 45
87
“Pray for me! I reckoned if she knowed me she’d take a job that was more nearer her size. But I bet she done it, just the same—she was just that kind. She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notion—there warn’t no back-down to her, I judge.”
Source: Chapter 32, Paragraph 52
88
“I hain’t ever seen her since that time that I see her go out of that door; no, I hain’t ever seen her since, but I reckon I’ve thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she would pray for me; and if ever I’d a thought it would do any good for me to pray for her, blamed if I wouldn’t a done it or bust.”
Source: Chapter 32, Paragraph 52
89
“The duke he never let on he suspicioned what was up, but just went a goo-gooing around, happy and satisfied, like a jug that’s googling out buttermilk; and as for the king, he just gazed and gazed down sorrowful on them new-comers like it give him the stomach-ache in his very heart to think there could be such frauds and rascals in the world.”
Source: Chapter 33, Paragraph 1
90
“So in two seconds away we went a-sliding down the river, and it did seem so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river, and nobody to bother us.”
Source: Chapter 33, Paragraph 88
91
“Set her loose, Jim! we’re all right now! But there warn’t no answer, and nobody come out of the wigwam. Jim was gone! I set up a shout—and then another—and then another one; and run this way and that in the woods, whooping and screeching; but it warn’t no use—old Jim was gone.”
Source: Chapter 35, Paragraph 5
92
“After all this long journey, and after all we’d done for them scoundrels, here it was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars.”
Source: Chapter 35, Paragraph 18
93
“It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they?”
Source: Chapter 35, Paragraph 20
94
“I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double.”
Source: Chapter 35, Paragraph 20
95
“I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all.”
Source: Chapter 35, Paragraph 20
96
“Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone.”
Source: Chapter 35, Paragraph 21
97
“I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now.”
Source: Chapter 35, Paragraph 24

Recommended quote pages

Huckleberry FinnTom SawyerJimAunt PollyBen RogersColonel SherburnMary JaneBecky ThatcherColonel GrangerfordSid SawyerJudge ThatcherMuff PotterInjun JoeMrs. HarperJoe Harperthe WelshmanWidow DouglasPap FinnMrs. LoftusBuck GrangerfordThe Duke (Huckleberry Finn)The Dauphin (Huckleberry Finn)Harvey WilksMary Jane Wilksbehaviorpeoplehumilitythoughtsmoralsstarsnightprayinghonestyemotionsroyaltyplansguiltmistakesdishonestysinbeing yourselfadmirationknowledgetruthfearhelping othersconsciencereligionanimalsactionssolemnitythe deadcemeterybeating heartsticking togetherkeeping quietto keep a secretrevengeadventuresadventurousexplorationliesjudgementsbreaking promisespowera piratemake-believenicknamessatisfactionbullyingliving the good lifeteasinggoing homehomesicktalkingnervousnessworriedsecretsfeeling sorry for someonekindnesstaking care of othershungerforgottenrememberingfriendsdead peoplegetting in troubleto protectdistresslaughterlaughter is the best medicinelostgetting helpmoneycavesadvantageshomeproofricheschurchdislikesermonscheduleroutinerulesrestrictionsfrustrationworryregretgrass is always greenerdislikeslikesgrowing to like somethingnamespitynew clothesfeeling uncomfortablehypocritedoing goodfind faultironyitchinessforbiddenfairnessfamilyconsequenceskillingwomento be treated wellbeing politefalling in loveprayergettinglost itemsnot knowingignoranceschooleducationgood enoughlikingold waysnew waysgetting used to somethingfather-son relationshipspridebeing better thanprayersnot workinglack of faithlonelinesskeeping busybad lucksnakeskinkeeping secretstrustmistreatmentrunawaypeacefulfloatingchickensthieveryjustificationborrowingstealingright vs. wrongmurdercapable ofto becomebeing proud of someoneshipwrecksbeing donedifferenceslanguagesFrenchbeing alivehealthydoing the right thingdoing wronglearning youngexcusesraftsfreeeasycomfortablethe skiescreationtitlestreating like royaltyservingkeeping the peacelyinggetting alonglearninggetting your waywasting moneycircusspendingwivesbeheadedcasuallyclothesappearanceschangecon menfraudactingcryingsympathyfeeling guiltymaking things rightmake things worsejaillaying lowfooledtaken advantage offeeling bad for someoneblessingsdecisionstelling the truthblameforgivenessdisbelieffarewellsthinking of someoneplaying a partgetting awayfreedombeing alonegonealonemissingcompanionsgetting caughtworthrepentancebeing betterheartbeing unable to prayholding onburdens being lightenedpeacebeing cleansedsins
View All Quotes