1. "The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it"
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Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
2. "Ah, if he could only die temporarily!"
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Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
3. "Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. 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. 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. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign."
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Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
4. "Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. 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."
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Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
5. "Well, everybody does it that way, Huck." "Tom, I am not everybody."
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Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
6. "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"
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Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
7. "Huck was always willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital, for he had a troublesome super-abundance of that sort of time which is not money."
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Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
8. "Who knows, he may grow up to be President someday, unless they hang him first!" Aunt Polly about Tom Sawyer"
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Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
9. "A brown spotted lady-bug climbed the dizzy height of a grass blade, and Tom bent down close to it and said, "Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children's alone," and she took wing and went off to see about it -- which did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was credulous about conflagrations, and he had practised upon its simplicity more than once."
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Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
10. "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."
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Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer