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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Whether forming a pirate gang to search for buried treasure or spending a quiet time at home, sharing his medicine with Aunt Polly's cat, the irrepressible Tom Sawyer evokes the world of boyhood in nineteenth century rural America. In this classic st

(12 total)

Characters

Mark Twain (12)

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

— Mark Twain, amazon.com

Tagged: Work, play, Obligation, Body, Life

“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 piraci…”

— Mark Twain, amazon.com

“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 sa…”

— Mark Twain, amazon.com

“She makes me get 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 ca…”

— Mark Twain, amazon.com

“To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.”

— Mark Twain, amazon.com

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

— Mark Twain, amazon.com

“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.”

— Mark Twain, amazon.com

“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.”

— Mark Twain, amazon.com

“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.”

— Mark Twain, amazon.com

Tagged: Wisdom, Youth, Childhood, humanity, Law

“Huck was always willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital, for he had a troublesome super-abundance of that sort of time which is not money.”

— Mark Twain, amazon.com

Tagged: Wisdom, Youth, Childhood, Capitalism, Value

“When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop - that is, with a marriage; but when he writes about juveniles, he must stop where he best can.”

— Mark Twain, amazon.com

Tagged: Wisdom, Youth, Childhood, Marriage, novel

“Ah, if he could only die temporarily!”

— Mark Twain, amazon.com

Tagged: Wisdom, humor, Funny, Death, temporary death