Mark Twain

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.

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.

Ah, if he could only die temporarily!

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.

“Answer the gentleman, Thomas—don’t be afraid.”

Tom still hung fire.

“Now I know you’ll tell me,” said the lady. “The names of the first two disciples were—”

“David and Goliah!”

Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of the scene.

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.

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.

Girls’ faces always tell on them. They ain’t got any backbone.

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.

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.

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

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 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.