"I wrote 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huck Finn'..." - Quote by Mark Twain
I wrote 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huck Finn' for adults exclusively, and it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean.
More by Mark Twain
More on Books
“I can't imagine I could have become the person I am now without books. Books became synonymous with freedom. They showed that you could open doors and walk through.”
“To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will tax the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.”
“I am sure of this, that by going much alone a man will get more of a noble courage in thought and word than from all the wisdom that is in books.”
More on Childhood
“The beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken.”
“My mama told me I was already in a hurry as a child. I even had measles and chicken pox at the same time”
“For the sadness in legitimate humour consists in the fact that honestly and without deceit it reflects in a purely human way upon what it is to be a child.”