― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
If someone was preaching weekly sermons based on this book, I'd be the most regular attending congregant in town. I offer the link below as exhibit A in making my case that of all the fictional texts that provide the basis for a multitude of faiths in the world-- few (in my limited knowledge) serve up as much practical and dependable spiritual guidance as this single work of imaginative genius. Hyperbole? Judge for yourself here with large sampler at:
http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1835605-the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn?page=1
Or if you prefer to stay where you are, here's a smaller sampler.
“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 upwards of a thousand places.”
“Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.”
“All kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur as I can make out.”
“The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's what an army is--a mob; they don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers."
“You can't pray a lie -- I found that out.”
“My, you ought to seen old Henry the Eight when he was in bloom. He was a blossom. He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs. 'Fetch up Nell Gwynn,' he says. They fetch her up. Next morning, 'Chop off her head!' And they chop it off. 'Fetch up Jane Shore,' he says; and up she comes, Next morning, 'Chop off her head'—and they chop it off. 'Ring up Fair Rosamun.' Fair Rosamun answers the bell. Next morning, 'Chop off her head.' ..... All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. It's the way they're raised.”
“It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened- Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many.”
“What got you into trouble?" says the baldhead to t'other chap.
"Well, I'd been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth—and it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with it—”
“If you tell the truth you do not need a good memory!”
The climactic moment in the narrative is when the runaway slave Jim is betrayed by The Duke and Dauphin and sold “for forty dirty dollars,” to the Phelpses--who then lock Jim in their shed, where he awaits his return to his rightful owner for a $200 reward. Huck goes back to the raft to figure out what to do next, and talks about the lessons he learned in Sunday school and what happens to people who don't report runaway slaves to the "authorities."
“People that acts as I’d been acting about [Jim],” he’d been told, “goes to everlasting fire.”
(After all, the Bible is clear: “Slaves obey your earthly masters with respect and fear”- Ephesians 6:5.)
Huck feels genuine conviction regarding his sin and, fearful of his certain fate in hell unless he changes course, he decides to write a letter to Jim’s owner, Miss Watson, to tell her where Jim can be found. After writing the letter he muses:
" It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. 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."
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
per
G.G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE”
