Here are the 35 best handpicked quotes from “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain:
From “The elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.” to “This final feather broke the camel’s back.”
So if you want the best quotes from “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” then you’re in the right place.
Let’s jump right in!
My Favorite “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” Quote
#1
“The elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
This quote reminded me of how one should really cherish their youth because we only get to experience it once and we all have all the time to be old.
It shows how resilient we are when we are young and our resistance to being conformed into a singular mold or character imposed by the society because we just want to experience life and grow as we go through its ups and downs.
Indeed, it is so wonderful to be young and feel like you still have so much time ahead of you.
Best Handpicked Quotes From “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain
#2
“’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.’”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#3
“They confessed that they had had almost as satisfactory a time at the funeral as they could have had at the hanging.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#4
“They had been hid in the unused gallery listening to their own funeral sermon!”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#5
“Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#6
“Damn her, maybe she’s got company–there’s lights, late as it is.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#7
“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!”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#8
“The group loitered away, still recalling memories of the lost heroes, in awed voices.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#9
“…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.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#10
“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.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#11
“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.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#12
“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.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#13
“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.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#14
“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!”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#15
“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.’
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#16
“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.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#17
“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.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#18
“They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than President of the United States forever.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#19
“He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though–and loathed him.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#20
“’Well, everybody does it that way, Huck.’
‘Tom, I am not everybody.’”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#21
“All right, though; she’d like to see me in just such a fix–let her sweat it out!”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#22
“But something informed him that if they had had any trouble they had got rid of it.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#23
“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!”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#24
“There–what did I tell you? Half of it’s Huck’s and half of it’s mine!”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#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?”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#26
“I could forgive the boy, now, if he’d committed a million sins!”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#27
“Plainly, here were ‘two souls with but a single thought.'”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#28
“All the ‘rot’ they 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.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#29
“Auntie, I wish I hadn’t done it–but I didn’t think.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#30
“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#31
“Tom was a glittering hero once more—the pet of the old, the envy of the young. His name even went into immortal print, for the village paper magnified him. There were some that believed he would be President, yet, if he escaped hanging.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#32
“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 saving.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#33
“Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#34
“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.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#35
“This final feather broke the camel’s back.”
— The Adventures of Tom Sawyer