#Quotes: Quotes from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. [P.1]

If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy - if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upward of a thousand places. [P.7]

I set down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it. I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pork? Why can't the widow get back her silver snuff-box that was stole? Why cna't Miss Watson fat up? No, says I to myself, there ain't nothing in it. [P.15]

He had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body would 'a' thought he was Adam - he was just all mud. [P.35]

De dream say let Balum inves' de ten cents en he'd make a raise for me. Well, Balum he tuck de money, en when he wuz in church he hear de preacher say dat whoever give de po' len' to de Lord, en boun' to git his money back a hund'd times. So Balum he tuck en give de ten cents to the po', en laid low to see what wuz gwyine to come of it. [P.61]

Pap always said, take a chicken when you get the chance, because if you don't want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot, but I never see papa when he didn't want the chicken himself. [P.84-5]

Dat truck da is trash; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren's en makes 'em shamed. [P.111]

[A] body that don't get started right when he's little ain't go no show - when the pinch comes there ain't nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. [P.118]

If I never learnt nothing else of pap, I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way. [P.160]

'Tis my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of oppression. Misfortune has borken my once haughty spirit; I yield, I submit; 'tis my fate. I am alone in the world - let me suffer; I can bear it. [P. 163]

Cler the track, thar. I'm on the waw-path, and the price uv coffins is a-gwyne to raise. [P.181]

The painfulest thing out is a mob; that's what an army is - a mob; they don'g fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any man at the head of is is beneath pitifulness. Now the thing for you to do is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in hole. If any real lynching's going to be done it will be done in the dark, Southern fashion; and when they come they'll bring their masks, and fetch a man along. Now leave - and take your half-a-man with you... [P.188]

Cuss the doctor! What do we k'yer for him? Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town? [P.226]

A little thing like that don't cost nothing, and it's just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked. There warn't no more popular man in town than what that undertaker was. [P.232]

It was only a little thing to do, and no trouble; and it's the little things that smooths people's roads the most, down here below; it would make Mary Jane comfortable, and it wouldn't cost nothing. [P.242]

That's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide, it ain't no disgrace. [P.270]

So we poked along back home, and I warn't feeling so harsh as I was before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow - though I hadn't done nothing. But that's always the way; it don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn't know more than a person's conscience does I would pison him. [P.294]

So it was - I noticed it. Well, it does beat all that I never thought about a dog not eating watermelon. It shows how a body can see and don't see at the same time. [P.296]

The men was very huffy, and some of them wanted to hang Jim for an example to all the other niggers around there, so they wouldn't be trying to run away like Jim done, and making such a raft of trouble, and keeping a whole family scared most to death for days and nights. But the others said, don't do it, it wouldn't answer at all; he ain't our nigger, and his owner would turn up and make us pay for him, sure. So that cooled them down a little, because the people that's always the most anxious for to hang a nigger that hain't done just right is always the very ones that ain't the most anxious to pay for him when they've got their satisfaction out of him. [P.362-3]
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