Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).
Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
Get a bicycle. You will not regret it. If you live.
Ah, if he could only die temporarily!
There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it.
The elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.
If everybody was satisfied with himself there would be no heroes.
Huckleberry was cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town because he was idle, and lawless, and vulgar, and bad – and because all their children admired him so, and delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like him.
That desire which is in us all to better other people’s condition by having them think as we think.
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 obtain.
Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.