Huck Finn Morality Quotes

“Well, dey’s reasons. But you wouldn’ tell on me ef I uz to tell you, would you, Huck?”
“Blamed if I would, Jim.”
“Well, I b’lieve you, Huck. I – I RUN OFF.”
“Jim!”
“But mind, you said you wouldn’ tell – you know you said you wouldn’ tell, Huck.”
“Well, I did. I said I wouldn’t, and I’ll stick to it. Honest INJUN, I will. People would call me a low-down Abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum – but that don’t make no difference. I ain’t a-going to tell, and I ain’t a-going back there, anyways. So, now, le’s know all about it.”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 8. Huck is shocked that the Jim has run off. But he assures the runaway slave that he will keep his word about not telling on him. To Huck honoring his word to Jim appears more important than his own reputation, and even abiding by the law. Huck likes to defy society’s rules. Abolitionist is an allusion to abolitionism, the movement to end slavery.

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.

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.

I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him. My conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I says to it, “Let up on me – it ain’t too late yet – I’ll paddle ashore at the first light and tell.” I felt easy and happy and light as a feather right off. All my troubles was gone.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 16. Huck’s conscience troubles him after Jim threatens to buy or steal his children from their slave owner. He tells his conscience he will turn the runaway slave Jim in.

I felt so ornery and low down and mean, that I says to myself, my mind’s made up; I’ll hive that money for them or bust.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 26. Hucks feels bad for letting the Duke and King rob the sweet Wilks sisters in one of their most conniving scams. For the first time he acts on his conscience and decides to help the girls save their money. He is being hypocritical as he has never challenged or exposed the fraudster paid, despite knowing what they were from the start.

I tucked the money bag under the lid, just down beyond where his hands was crossed, which made me creep, they was so cold, and then I ran back across the room and in behind the door.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 27. On hearing footsteps, Huck stashes the money he is stealing back from the Duke and King in the nearest hiding place – the coffin. Huck tricks the con duo by using “immoral” actions, but it is done for the greater good to return the money to Mary Jane and her family.

Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he’d got to be a slave, and so I’d better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion for two things: she’d be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she’d sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn’t, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful n*****, and they’d make Jim feel it all the time, and so he’d feel ornery and disgraced.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 31. Huck wrestles with his conscience over the fate of runaway slave Jim, who has been sold back into captivity by the two conmen.

But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ‘stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 31. Huck agonizes over whether he should turn in the fugitive slave Jim, as society’s rules demand he should. He tries to come up with something that will “harden” him against the runaway. But his bond of friendship with Jim is so strong and deep, he cannot.

I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
“All right, then, I’ll go to hell.” – and tore it up.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 31. Huck faces a moral dilemma. He realises the Duke and Dauphin have betrayed and sold runaway slave Jim into captivity. If he stands idly by Jim will be transported back to Miss Watson. At first Huck writes a letter to warn Miss Watson, but then decides to tear it up and save Jim. He cannot go along with what he has always been taught, that the slave is property. So he goes against the teaching of his church, elders, and society.

Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn’t ever feel any hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings CAN be awful cruel to one another.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 33. Huck on the King and Duke tarred and feathered by the mob. This kind of cruel punishment was common as a type of mob vengeance in the United States. While the conmen deserve to be punished, Huck with his strong sense of conscience feels guilty about the situation.

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 no more than a person’s conscience does, I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no good, nohow.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 33. After the King and Duke are captured, tarred and feathered by the town, Huck feels guilty but doesn’t know why. Huck’s battle with his conscience is one of the central conflicts of the novel.
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