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Huckleberry Finn Quotes

After breakfast I wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he come to be killed, but Jim didn’t want to. He said it would fetch bad luck; and besides, he said, he might come and ha’nt us; he said a man that warn’t buried was more likely to go a-ha’nting around than one that was planted and comfortable.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 10. Huck wanted to talk about the dead man, but a superstitious Jim avoided the subject saying it would bring bad luck and the man could haunt them.

Jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then he got out of his head and pitched around and yelled; but every time he come to himself he went to sucking at the jug again. His foot swelled up pretty big, and so did his leg; but by and by the drunk begun to come, and so I judged he was all right; but I’d druther been bit with a snake than pap’s whisky.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 10. Pap’s alcoholism has left Huck with only negative associations of alcohol. Huck is able to see, however, that everyone who drinks isn’t as harmful as his Pap is; he understands that his father is an extreme case.

I’ve always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off of the shot-tower, and spread himself out so that he was just a kind of a layer, as you may say; and they slid him edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but I didn’t see it. Pap told me. But anyway it all come of looking at the moon that way, like a fool.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 10. Huck quotes a story from Pap Finn about the superstition of looking at the moon the wrong way and suffering tragic bad luck as a result.

So then they put it on him, you see; and while they was full of it, next day, back comes old Finn, and went boo-hooing to Judge Thatcher to get money to hunt for the n***** all over Illinois with. The judge gave him some, and that evening he got drunk, and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty hard-looking strangers, and then went off with them.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 11. Huck’s father Pap values alcohol above finding his son’s potential murderer.

“Bless you, child, when you set out to thread a needle don’t hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it; hod the needle still and poke the thread at it; that’s the way a woman most always does, but a man always does t’other way. And when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a tiptoe and fetch your hand over your head as awkward as you can, and miss your rat about six or seven foot.”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 11. The differences between boys and girls that allow the crafty Mrs. Loftus to see through Huck’s girl disguise and outsmart trickster Huck.

This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current that was making over four mile an hour. We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn’t ever feel like talking loud, and it warn’t often that we laughed – only a little kind of a low chuckle.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 12. Hucks explains that while he and Jim float downsteam on their raft, the Mississippi is a
source of food and spiritual nourishment for them. They enjoy the freedom of being in the wilderness.

Every night now I used to slip ashore towards ten o’clock at some little village, and buy ten or fifteen cents’ worth of meal or bacon or other stuff to eat; and sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn’t roosting comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don’t want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain’t ever forgot. I never see pap when he didn’t want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say, anyway.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 12. Some nights Hucks lands at a nearby town to buy food or on occasions steal a chicken. His father Pap told him that you might as well steal a chicken whenever you can, because if you don’t want it yourself you can give it away.

Mornings, before daylight, I slipped into corn fields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. Pap always said it warn’t no harm to borrow things, if you was meaning to pay them back, sometime; but the widow said it warn’t anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it. Jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right; so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list and say we wouldn’t borrow them any more – then he reckoned it wouldn’t be no harm to borrow the others.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 12. Every now and then when they are by a village, Huck goes into a corn field and ‘borrows’ food. Sadly some of his ideas about life comes from his father. One is that stealing something doesn’t make you a bad person, as long as you intend to pay it back.

And in he come, and Bill after him. But before they got in I was up in the upper berth, cornered, and sorry I come. Then they stood there, with their hands on the ledge of the berth, and talked. I couldn’t see them, but I could tell where they was by the whisky they’d been having. I was glad I didn’t drink whisky; but it wouldn’t made much difference anyway, because most of the time they couldn’t a treed me because I didn’t breathe. I was too scared. And, besides, a body COULDN’T breathe and hear such talk. They talked low and earnest. Bill wanted to kill Turner.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 12. Huck is afraid for his life when he and Jim board a steamboat crippled on a rock and he overhears two robbers on whisky threatening to kill a third.

“Well, my idea is this: we’ll rustle around and gather up whatever pickins we’ve overlooked in the state-rooms, and shove for shore and hide the truck. Then we’ll wait. Now I say it ain’t a-goin’ to be more’n two hours befo’ this wrack breaks up and washes off down the river. See? He’ll be drownded, and won’t have nobody to blame for it but his own self. I reckon that’s a considerble sight better ‘n killin’ of him. I’m unfavorable to killin’ a man as long as you can git aroun’ it; it ain’t good sense, it ain’t good morals. Ain’t I right?”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 12. One of the thieves that Huck meets on the steamship. Even robbers have a moral if hypocritical code apparently – don’t kill if you can leave him to drown.

“Quick, Jim, it ain’t no time for fooling around and moaning; there’s a gang of murderers in yonder, and if we don’t hunt up their boat and set her drifting down the river so these fellows can’t get away from the wreck there’s one of ’em going to be in a bad fix. But if we find their boat we can put all of ’em in a bad fix – for the sheriff ‘ll get ’em.”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 12. Huck yells out to Jim that there are murderers on the wrecked boat, who are plotting to leave one of their own to drown. He hatches a plan to trap them on the wreck so the sheriff can nab them.

“The first light we see we’ll land a hundred yards below it or above it, in a place where it’s a good hiding-place for you and the skiff, and then I’ll go and fix up some kind of a yarn, and get somebody to go for that gang and get them out of their scrape, so they can be hung when their time comes.”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 13. Huck comes up with a plan to get help for the thieves on board the wrecked steamboat. To save them from harm, but also to ensure they are brought to justice and hanged.

“They’re in an awful peck of trouble, and – ”
“WHO is?”
“Why, pap and mam and sis and Miss Hooker; and if you’d take your ferryboat and go up there – ”
“Up where? Where are they?”
“On the wreck.”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 13. Huck makes up a story to the watchman about his own family being trapped on the wrecked steamboat. He feels bad for the robber-murderers stranded on the wreck without any means of escape. Huck has a strong moral center, but is not beyond lying when the situation calls for it.

Well, before long here comes the wreck, dim and dusky, sliding along down! A kind of cold shiver went through me, and then I struck out for her. She was very deep, and I see in a minute there warn’t much chance for anybody being alive in her. I pulled all around her and hollered a little, but there wasn’t any answer; all dead still. I felt a little bit heavy-hearted about the gang, but not much, for I reckoned if they could stand it I could.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 13. At first Huck had wanted to see the gang of robbers on the wreck hanged. But he felt guilty because they were in danger and summoned help. Before the rescue ferryboat arrives, he watches the wreck slide down the river and feels a “shiver” over the gang’s fate.

“I doan k’yer what de widder say, he warn’t no wise man, nuther. He had some er de dad-fetchedes’ ways I ever see. Does you know ’bout dat chile dat he ‘uz gwyne to chop in two?”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 14. Jim doesn’t care what the Widow Douglas told Huck about Solomon being the wisest man, he is not impressed with his child-chopping. This is an allusion to a Bible story in I Kings 3:16-28, in which the wise King Solomon resolves a dispute between two women over a child by suggesting to cut the child in two.

“Well, it’s a blame ridicklous way, en I doan’ want to hear no mo’ ’bout it. Dey ain’ no sense in it.”
“Looky here, Jim; does a cat talk like we do?”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 14. Jim can’t believe that people speak different languages all over the world, since we’re all the same. Huck is trying to explain that even though people are different they should not be critiqued based on where they are. But Jim is reaching a deeper point, no matter the race, place, position or language you have in the world, you have a right to be considered the equal of anyone.

“Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck? En you ain’ dead – you ain’ drownded – you’s back agin? It’s too good for true, honey, it’s too good for true. Lemme look at you chile, lemme feel o’ you. No, you ain’ dead! you’s back agin, ‘live en soun’, jis de same ole Huck – de same ole Huck, thanks to goodness!”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 15. Jim is happy and thankful to see that Huck is still alive after they after they had lost each other in the fog on the river.

“Well, this is too many for me, Jim. I hain’t seen no fog, nor no islands, nor no troubles, nor nothing. I been setting here talking with you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago, and I reckon I done the same. You couldn’t a got drunk in that time, so of course you’ve been dreaming.”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 15. After Jim and Huck are separated on the river by a dense fog, Huck plays a prank on Jim and tries to convince him that the entire night of separation was a dream of Jim’s.

It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a n*****; but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that one if I’d a knowed it would make him feel that way.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 15. Huck was raised to be racist so it takes him a while to apologize to a black man like Jim for lying to him. 13-year-old Huck sees the runaway slave in a different way, plays no more pranks on him and they become friends as they sail down the Mississippi to reach a state where slavery is illegal.

Well, I can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, because I begun to get it through my head that he WAS most free – and who was to blame for it? Why, ME. I couldn’t get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn’t rest; I couldn’t stay still in one place. It hadn’t ever come home to me before, what this thing was that I was doing. But now it did; and it stayed with me, and scorched me more and more. I tried to make out to myself that I warn’t to blame, because I didn’t run Jim off from his rightful owner; but it warn’t no use, conscience up and says, every time, “But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody.” That was so – I couldn’t get around that noway. That was where it pinched.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 16. Huck is having a moral crisis. Conflicted over matters of right and wrong, and questions of freedom and slavery, he wrestles over what he should do. Jim is all excited about the possibilities of freedom, but Huck knows that according to the racist society he comes from, he is breaking the law for aiding and abetting a runaway slave.
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