The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Quotes

“Oh come, now, you don’t mean to let on that you like it?” The brush continued to move. “Like it? Well I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?” That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth—stepped back to note the effect—added a touch here and there—criticized the effect again—Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said: “Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.”

“Tom was a glittering hero once more—the pet of the old, the envy of the young. His name even went into immortal print, for the village paper magnified him. There were some that believed he would be President, yet, if he escaped hanging.”

“Say, Becky, was you ever engaged?” “What’s that?” “Why, engaged to be married.” “No.” “Would you like to?” “I reckon so. I don’t know. What is it like?” “Like? Why it ain’t like anything. 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.”

“Saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart . . . 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.”

“There was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had even stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was broken by no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a woodpecker, and this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense of loneliness the more profound. The boy’s soul was steeped in melancholy; his feelings were in happy accord with his surroundings.”

“Then her conscience reproached her, and she yearned to say something kind and loving; but she judged that this would be construed into a confession that she had been in the wrong, and discipline forbade that. So she kept silence, and went about her affairs with a troubled heart.”

“But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time. Tom presently began to drift insensibly back into the concerns of his life again. What if he turned his back, now, and disappeared mysteriously? . . . [H]e would join the Indians . . . He would be a pirate! That was it! Now his future lay plain before him, and glowing with unimaginable splendor.”

“I ain’t doing my duty by that boy, and that’s the Lord’s truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. I’m a-laying up sin and suffering for us both, I know. He’s full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he’s my own dead sister’s boy, poor thing, and I ain’t got the heart to lash him, somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and every time I hit him my old heart most breaks.”

“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”

“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.”

“Tom was a glittering hero once more-the pet of the old, the envy of the young. His name even went into immortal print, for the village paper magnified him. There were some that believed he would be President, yet, if he escaped hanging.”

“There was no getting around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only “hooking,” while taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain simple stealing — and there was a command against that in the Bible. So they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing.”

“I could forgive the boy, now, if he’d committed a million sins!”

“Well, everybody does it that way, Huck.” “Tom, I am not everybody.”

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

“Oh, they just have a bully time - take ships, and burn them, and get the money and bury it in awful places in their island where there’s ghosts and things to watch, it, and kill everybody in the ships - make ‘em walk a plank. they don’t kill the women - they’re too noble. And the women’s always beautiful, too.”

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

“The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod — and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving.”

“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.”

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

“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 obtain.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.”

“Ah, if he could only die temporarily!”

“But old fools is the biggest fools there is. Can’t learn an old dog new tricks, as the saying is. ”

“If he hadn’t run out of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.”

“Aunt Polly placed small trust in such evidence. She went out to see for herself; and she would have been content to find twenty per cent. of Tom’s statement true. When she found the entire fence white-ashed, and not only whitewashed but elaborately coated and recoated, and even a streak added to the ground, her astonishment was almost unspeakable.”

“Well, I never! There’s no getting round it, you can work when you’re a mind to, Tom.”

“He said to himself that he would not speak a word, even when his aunt came in, but would sit perfectly still till she asked who did the mischief; and then he would tell, and there would be nothing so good in the world as to see that pet model “catch it.”

And thus _she_ would see him when she looked out upon the glad morning, and oh! would she drop one little tear upon his poor, lifeless form, would she heave one little sigh to see a bright young life so rudely blighted, so untimely cut down?

And you never can be sorry for the trouble you took to learn them; for knowledge is worth more than anything there is in the world; it’s what makes great men and good men; you’ll be a great man and a good man yourself, some day, Thomas...”

“But now he did not know the necessary symptoms. However, it seemed well worth while to chance it, so he fell to groaning with considerable spirit.”

“Oh, you don’t, don’t you? So all this row was because you thought you’d get to stay home from school and go a-fishing? Tom, Tom, I love you so, and you seem to try every way you can to break my old heart with your outrageousness.”

Tom was about to take refuge in a lie, when he saw two long tails of yellow hair hanging down a back that he recognized by the electric sympathy of love; and by that form was the only vacant place on the girls’ side of the school-house. He instantly said:

″‘It’s easy,’ whispered Tom, ‘I’ll learn you.‘”

″‘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?‘”

“Church ain’t shucks to a circus.”

“Like? Why it ain’t like anything. 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.”

“Now it’s all done, Becky. And always after this, you know, you ain’t ever to love anybody but me, and you ain’t ever to marry anybody but me, ever never and forever. Will you?”

“No, I’ll never love anybody but you, Tom, and I’ll never marry anybody but you—and you ain’t to ever marry anybody but me, either.”

“She would be sorry some day—maybe when it was too late. Ah, if he could only die _temporarily_!”

“What if he turned his back, now, and disappeared mysteriously? What if he went away—ever so far away, into unknown countries beyond the seas—and never came back any more! How would she feel then!”

″‘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?‘”

“And the two clung together with beating hearts.”

“Joe, I never meant to—‘pon my soul and honor, I never meant to, Joe.”

“Oh, I didn’t know what I was a-doing. I wish I may die this minute if I did. It was all on account of the whiskey and the excitement, I reckon.”

“No, you’ve always been fair and square with me, Muff Potter, and I won’t go back on you. There, now, that’s as fair as a man can say.”

“Oh, Joe, you’re an angel. I’ll bless you for this the longest day I live.”

“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.”

“Oh no, that wouldn’t do for this. That’s good enough for little rubbishy common things—specially with gals, cuz _they_ go back on you anyway, and blab if they get in a huff—but there orter be writing ‘bout a big thing like this. And blood.”

“Dad fetch it! This comes of playing hookey and doing everything a feller’s told not to do. I might a been good, like Sid, if I’d a tried—but no, I wouldn’t, of course. But if ever I get off this time, I lay I’ll just waller in Sunday-schools!”

The spirit of adventure rose in the boys’ souls once more.

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.

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.

He never knew that Sid lay nightly watching, and frequently slipped the bandage free and then leaned on his elbow listening a good while at a time, and afterward slipped the bandage back to its place again.

“Now you’ve asked for it, and I’ll give it to you, because there ain’t anything mean about me; but if you find you don’t like it, you mustn’t blame anybody but your own self.”

“Deed I don’t know, Aunt Polly; cats always act so when they’re having a good time.”

“I know you was meaning for the best, aunty, and so was I with Peter. It done _him_ good, too. I never see him get around so since—”

″‘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.‘”

“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.”

“I’d a good deal rather be a pirate, now that I’ve tried it.”

“Oh, they have just a bully time—take ships and burn them, and get the money and bury it in awful places in their island where there’s ghosts and things to watch it, and kill everybody in the ships—make ‘em walk a plank.”

“Boys, I know who’s drownded—it’s us!”

“Oh, Mrs. Harper, I don’t know how to give him up! I don’t know how to give him up! He was such a comfort to me, although he tormented my old heart out of me, ‘most.”

“Not a word against my Tom, now that he’s gone! God’ll take care of _him_—never you trouble _your_ self, sir!”

“Oh, if it was to do over again I’d hug him and bless him for it.”

“Tom was snuffling, now, himself—and more in pity of himself than anybody else.”

“He could hear Mary crying, and putting in a kindly word for him from time to time. He began to have a nobler opinion of himself than ever before.”

“Still, he was sufficiently touched by his aunt’s grief to long to rush out from under the bed and overwhelm her with joy—and the theatrical gorgeousness of the thing appealed strongly to his nature, too, but he resisted and lay still.”

“Then with a mutual impulse the two bereaved women flung themselves into each other’s arms and had a good, consoling cry, and then parted.”

“But Joe’s spirits had gone down almost beyond resurrection. He was so homesick that he could hardly endure the misery of it. The tears lay very near the surface.”

“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?”

“Why, many a time I’ve looked at people smoking, and thought well I wish I could do that; but I never thought I could,” said Tom.

“Well, I don’t say it wasn’t a fine joke, Tom, to keep everybody suffering ‘most a week so you boys had a good time, but it is a pity you could be so hard-hearted as to let me suffer so. If you could come over on a log to go to your funeral, you could have come over and give me a hint some way that you warn’t dead, but only run off.”

“It would have been something if you’d cared enough to think of it, even if you didn’t do it.”

“A body does just the same in a dream as he’d do if he was awake.”

I’m thankful to the good God and Father of us all I’ve got you back, that’s long-suffering and merciful to them that believe on Him and keep His word, though goodness knows I’m unworthy of it, but if only the worthy ones got His blessings and had His hand to help them over the rough places, there’s few enough would smile here or ever enter into His rest when the long night comes.

“Becky’s lips trembled and the tears came to her eyes; she hid these signs with a forced gayety and went on chattering, but the life had gone out of the picnic, now, and out of everything else; she got away as soon as she could and hid herself and had what her sex call “a good cry.”

“Oh, child, you never think. You never think of anything but your own selfishness. You could think to come all the way over here from Jackson’s Island in the night to laugh at our troubles, and you could think to fool me with a lie about a dream; but you couldn’t ever think to pity us and save us from sorrow.”

″‘What did you kiss me for, Tom?’ ‘Because I loved you so, and you laid there moaning and I was so sorry.‘”

“It’s a good lie—it’s a good lie—I won’t let it grieve me.”

“I acted mighty mean today, Becky, and I’m so sorry. I won’t ever, ever do that way again, as long as ever I live—please make up, won’t you?”

“What a curious kind of a fool a girl is! Never been licked in school! Shucks! What’s a licking! That’s just like a girl—they’re so thin-skinned and chicken-hearted.”

“Tom stood a moment, to gather his dismembered faculties; and when he stepped forward to go to his punishment the surprise, the gratitude, the adoration that shone upon him out of poor Becky’s eyes seemed pay enough for a hundred floggings.”

There were some boys-and-girls’ parties, but they were so few and so delightful that they only made the aching voids between ache the harder.

“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.”

“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.”

“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.‘”

“Speak out, my boy—don’t be diffident. The truth is always respectable. What did you take there?”

“As usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its bosom and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But that sort of conduct is to the world’s credit; therefore it is not well to find fault with it.”

“Daily Muff Potter’s gratitude made Tom glad he had spoken; but nightly he wished he had sealed up his tongue.”

“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.”

“Yes: but look here; it may be a good while before I get the right chance at that job; accidents might happen; ‘tain’t in such a very good place; we’ll just regularly bury it—and bury it deep.”

“Now what’s the use of all that? If it’s anybody, and they’re up there, let them stay there—who cares? If they want to jump down, now, and get into trouble, who objects? It will be dark in fifteen minutes—and then let them follow us if they want to. I’m willing. In my opinion, whoever hove those things in here caught a sight of us and took us for ghosts or devils or something. I’ll bet they’re running yet.”

“But shucks! Your mother won’t know, and so what’s the harm? All she wants is that you’ll be safe; and I bet you she’d ‘a’ said go there if she’d ‘a’ thought of it. I know she would!”

“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.”

“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.”

“Tom, Tom, we’re lost! we’re lost! We never can get out of this awful place! Oh, why did we ever leave the others!”

“Becky’ s frail limbs refused to carry her farther. She sat down. Tom rested with her, and they talked of home, and the friends there, and the comfortable beds and, above all, the light! Becky cried, and Tom tried to think of some way of comforting her, but all his encouragements were grown thread-bare with use, and sounded like sarcasms.”

“He tried to get Becky to talk, but her sorrows were too oppressive, all her hopes were gone.”

″‘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’.”

“Money. You make them raise all they can, off’n their friends; and after you’ve kept them a year, if it ain’t raised then you kill them. That’s the general way. Only you don’t kill the women. You shut up the women, but you don’t kill them. They’re always beautiful and rich, and awfully scared. You take their watches and things, but you always take your hat off and talk polite. They ain’t anybody as polite as robbers—you’ll see that in any book. Well, the women get to loving you, and after they’ve been in the cave a week or two weeks they stop crying and after that you couldn’t get them to leave. If you drove them out they’d turn right around and come back. It’s so in all the books.”

″‘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.‘”

“Sid, there’s only one person in this town mean enough to do that, and that’s you. If you had been in Huck’s place you’d ‘a’ sneaked down the hill and never told anybody on the robbers. You can’t do any but mean things, and you can’t bear to see anybody praised for doing good ones. There—no thanks, as the widow says”

“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.”

“I got to go to church and sweat and sweat—I hate them ornery sermons!”

“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.”

“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—”

“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.”

″‘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.‘”

“Yes, but that’s different. A robber is more high-toned than what a pirate is— as a general thing. In most countries they’re awful high up in the nobility—dukes and such.”

“It’s to swear to stand by one another, and never tell the gang’s secrets, even if you’re chopped all to flinders, and kill anybody and all his family that hurts one of the gang.”