The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain, 1876

Mark Twain’s novel of a mischievous boy growing up with his Aunt Polly in St. Petersburg, a small town on the Mississippi, who with his friend Huckleberry Finn witnesses a murder in the graveyard at midnight.

Start reading37 chapters, about 71,000 words

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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.
Chapter IIIn context
- Envy
- Motivation & Goals
Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and… Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
Ch. 2, p. 32In context
- Work
Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.
Chapter VIn context
- Change
Homely truth is unpalatable.
Chapter XXIIn context
- Truth & Lies
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.
Chapter XXIIIn context
- Character
Huck was always willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital, for he had a troublesome superabundance of that sort of time which is not money.
Chapter XXVIn context
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.
ConclusionIn context
- Marriage
- Writing

Famous quotes

Contents