This final feather broke the camel’s back. Chapter 10, pg. 70
2
‘Auntie, I wish I hadn’t done it–but I didn’t think.’ Chapter 19, pg. 118
3
‘Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?’ Chapter 2, pg. 12
4
Plainly, here were ‘two souls with but a single thought.’ Chapter 13, pg. 80
5
‘I could forgive the boy, now, if he’d committed a million sins!’ Chapter 19, pg. 120
6
‘Damn her, maybe she’s got company–there’s lights, late as it is.’ Chapter 29, pg. 168
7
There–what did I tell you? Half of it’s Huck’s and half of it’s mine! Chapter 34, pg. 203
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8
They had been hid in the unused gallery listening to their own funeral sermon! Chapter 17, pg. 109
9
But something informed him that if they had had any trouble they had got rid of it. Chapter 16, pg. 102
10
‘All right, though; she’d like to see me in just such a fix–let her sweat it out!’ Chapter 20, pg. 122
11
The group loitered away, still recalling memories of the lost heroes, in awed voices. Chapter 17, pg. 107
12
He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though–and loathed him. Chapter 1, pg. 4
13
They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than President of the United States forever. Chapter 8, pg. 57
14
[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
15
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
16
‘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
17
‘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
18
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
19
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
20
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
21
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
22
…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
23
‘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
24
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
25
…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
26
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
27
‘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
28
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
29
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. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.
30
“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”
31
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.
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
33
In the common walks of life, with what delightful emotions does the youthful mind look forward to some anticipated scene of festivity! Imagination is busy sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. In fancy, the voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the festive throng, ‘the observed of all observers.’ Her graceful form, arrayed in snowy robes, is whirling through the mazes of the joyous dance; her eye is brightest, her step is lightest in the gay assembly. “In such delicious fancies time quickly glides by, and the welcome hour arrives for her entrance into the Elysian world, of which she has had such bright dreams. How fairy-like does everything appear to her enchanted vision! Each new scene is more charming than the last. But after a while she finds that beneath this goodly exterior, all is vanity, the flattery which once charmed her soul, now grates harshly upon her ear; the ball-room has lost its charms; and with wasted health and imbittered heart, she turns away with the conviction that earthly pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of the soul!
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Roman Marshanski is the founder of Humoropedia.com and former Hollywood actor. You can Google his name to see the list of his movies (or you can click on his name above this box to visit his personal website). He wrote thousands of pages of fiction. Some of that fictional writing is screenplays and a lot of it is comedic writing. So he completed two feature film screenplays and many shorter literary works, some of which are comedy. He did most of that writing during his film career as a Hollywood actor. He was the lead actor in Rebecca Cremona's Magdalena. Rebecca Cremona was Steven Spielberg's protege on Munich. So he has a deep understanding of the creative process and can be considered an authority on all things related to humor. Indeed, his screenplays contain a lot of humor. That's where his love for jokes started. Eventually, this love of jokes led Roman to the creation of Humoropedia.com, the wonderful home of funny jokes and witty puns. He thinks humor is something very good. If you also think so, please follow him on X now because he has a sense of humor.
