Quotes from book
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Mark Twain

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The book was originally titled A Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Some early editions are titled A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur.

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“My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Source: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), Ch. 13.

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“The pilgrims were human beings. Otherwise they would have acted differently. They had come a long and difficult journey, and now when the journey was nearly finished, and they learned that the main thing they had come for had ceased to exist, they didn't do as horses or cats or angle-worms would probably have done — turn back and get at something profitable — no, anxious as they had before been to see the miraculous fountain, they were as much as forty times as anxious now to see the place where it had used to be. There is no accounting for human beings.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Ch. 22 http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-22.html
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

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“It is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergency requiring the fathoming of it hath not in my life-days occurred, and so, not having no need to know this thing, I abide barren of the knowledge.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Ch 25 http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-25.html
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

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“The citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal, he is a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay, does not excuse him: it is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Source: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), Ch. 13.

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“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Source: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), Ch. 22

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“Why, it was like reading about France and the French, before the ever memorable and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of such villany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood -- one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror -- that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Ch. 13 http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-13.html
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

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“His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Source: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

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“Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Source: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), Ch. 22

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“Words are only painted fire, a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Source: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

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“You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Source: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

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“You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Ch. 43 http://www.literature.org/authors/twain-mark/connecticut/chapter-43.html
Source: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

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