Mark Twain

After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers.

A gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years.

There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.

I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn’t make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me.

Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR.

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

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

“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.”

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

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.

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.