Tom Quotes

“Maybe a thing has to be smart enough to lose its mind.”

“Once she told me I looked like the sun to her, because of my hair. I asked her if I shined like the sun, and she told me, ‘No, Daddy, you shine more like the moon, when it’s dark outside.”

“Is he friendly?” Tom says quietly. “I’ve discovered,” Jules says, “that a dog will become fast friends with the people who feed him.”

“Robin was a great kid. Smarter than her father at eight years old. She liked the oddest things. Like the instructions for a toy more than the toy itself. The credits of a movie instead of the movie. The way something was written. An expression on my face.”

“Think about that, Malorie. It all kind of happened in a row, each step allowed the next step to happen. All because we weren’t stagnant. We took risks. Now you’ve got to do the same.”

“You must expect to be beat a few times in your life, little man, if you live such a life as a man ought to live, let you be as strong and healthy as you may; and when you are, you will find it a very ugly feeling. I hope that that day you may have a stout staunch friend by you who is not beat; for, if you have not, you had best lie where you are, and wait for better times, as poor Tom did.”

“For old Mrs. Earth was fast asleep; and, like many pretty people, she looked still prettier asleep than awake. The great elm trees in their gold-green meadows were fast asleep above, and the cows fast asleep beneath them; nay, the few clouds which were about were fast asleep likewise, and so tired that they had lain down on the earth to rest, in long white flakes and bars, among the stems of the elm trees, and along the tops of the alders by the stream, waiting for the sun to bid them rise and go about their days business in the clear blue overhead.”

“But the Irishwoman, alone of them all, had seen which way Tom went. She kept ahead of every one the whole time; and yet she neither walked nor ran. She went along quite smoothly and gracefully, while her feet twinkled past each other so fast that you could not see which was foremost; till every one asked the other who the strange women was; and all agreed, for want of anything better to say, that she must be in league with Tom.”

“Tom was amphibious: and what is better still, he was clean. For the first time in his life, he felt how comfortable it was to have nothing on him but himself. But he only enjoyed it: he did not know it, or think about it; just as you enjoy life and health, and yet never think about being alive and healthy; and may it be long before you have to think about it!”

“Tom had never seen the like. He had never been in gentlefolk’s rooms but when the carpets were all up, and the curtains down, and the furniture huddled together under a cloth, and the pictures covered with aprons and dusters; and he had often enough wondered what the rooms were like when they were all ready for the quality to sit in. And now he saw, and he thought the sight was very pretty.”

“And Tom, for the first time in his life, found out that he was dirty; and burst into tears with shame and anger; and turned to sneak up the chimney and hide; and upset the fender and threw the fire-irons down with a noise of ten thousand tin kettles tied to ten thousand mad dogs tails.”

“But mind maidens, he must not see you, or know that you are here. He is but a savage now, and like the beasts which perish; and from the beasts which perish he must learn. So you must not play with him, or speak to him, or let him see you: but only keep him from being harmed.”

“The reason of his falling into such a delightful sleep is very simple; and yet hardly any one has found it out. It was merely that the fairies took him.”

The two meet under the most dire circumstances because Wolfy’s uncle has a fatal accident. Being all alone and scared he seeks out Tom, the rabbit, who readily agrees to help Wolfy out in his time of need.

A friendship blossoms and despite their differences they become fast friends. Tom teaches Wolfy to play marbles, read, count and fish for his food

Wolfy teaches Tom to run really, really fast enabling him to run much faster than the other rabbits. Wolfy teaches his friend about being afraid.

One day Wolfy frightens Tom so badly while playing the game that the scared little rabbit rushes to his burrow and vows to never come out again.

Oh my! Tom tries so hard to apologize and to coax his best friend to come play with him once more, but alas, poor Tom just lays on his bed crying and crying his heart out.

“No, Tom, it had to be all of it. I wanted to drive that awful lonesome look out of their eyes, and it did, Tom. It did!”

“Will Tom, the quick-witted cabin boy, uncover Jake’s scheme and save the day? Captain Pugwash hopes so, for the sake of his pocketbook!”

“Of course it wasn’t the planks that Tom was nailing down! It was the barrels! But the pirated inside each barrel though it was the planks...until it came to their turn to be trapped.. and then it was too late”

“Tom had arrived in time to hear Jake outlining his plan to seize the ship...but he kept well out of sight so none of the ruffians realised that they had been overheard.”

“They couldn’t sail the ship without Tom to tell them what to do; they didn’t know how to cook, because Tom gad always done that, too. So they were reduced to eating the despised ship’s biscuits, weevils and all, and that evening they climbed miserably into their unmade bunks...”

“Next morning, Tom the cabin boy arrived in the Captain’s cabin with his early morning tea. ‘Wakey-wakey, Cap’n,’ he cried. ‘Come on! Wake UP! It’s your birthday today.”

“But then Tom interrupted. ‘Quiet, all of you!’ he cried. For Cut-throat Jake had not been able to resist joining in, and the cabin boy had heard him.”

“Tom and Barry both had one. I reckon half the kids in our class had one. But I didn’t. My mum wouldn’t ever listen to me. ‘You’re not having a balaclava! What do you want a balaclava for in the middle of the summer?”

“Wilson sets the scene vividly, from Tom’s home to the labyrinth of tunnels and caverns under the mountain, and the central characters’ emotional lives develop both naturally and affectingly.”

“While his widowed mother continues to search for him, eleven-year-old Tom, presumed dead after drifting away down a river, finds himself trapped in a series of underground caves with another survivor and a dog, and pursued by murderous treasure-hunters.”

“Flung over rapids and tossed through chasms, Tom finally hits shore, sore but alive. What Tom finds under Leepike Ridge—a dog, a flashlight, a castaway, a tomb, and buried treasure.”