Huck Finn Religion Quotes

After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care no more about him, because I don’t take no stock in dead people.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 1. The Widow Douglas reads to Huck the story of Moses and the Bulrushers from the Bible. But Huck is less interested in dead people and the Widow’s religion, and more in the religion of everyday living.

Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn’t think much of it. But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 1. Miss Watson joins in the mission to civilize Huck and teaches him all about Heaven. She believes Huck’s friend Tom is destined for Hell. But Huck likes Tom so much that he is happy to be with him there.

Tom said he slipped Jim’s hat off of his head and hung it on a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn’t wake. Afterward Jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees again, and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 2. Tom engages in some trickery towards Jim, who is a superstitious character and believes he has been bewitched by witches during his sleep.

Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn’t so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn’t any good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn’t make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn’t make it out no way.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 3. Miss Watson attempts to instil religion into Huck. But she loses all credibility with him when she explains the benefits of praying and he fails to get what he prayed for.

I went and told the Widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was “spiritual gifts.” This was too much for me, but she told me what she means – I must help others, and do everything I could for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself…but I couldn’t see no advantage about it – except for the other people – so at last I reckoned I wouldn’t worry about it any more, but just let it go.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 3. Huck has difficulty understanding the point of prayer, as explained to him by the Widow Douglas. The main purpose, she says, is to help other people. But he sees no advantage to serving society by giving up his freedom.

I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up, and went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body would a thought he was Adam – he was just all mud. Whenever his liquor begun to work he most always went for the govment.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 6. Huck’s life with his alcoholic father Pap. The allusion to Adam is about the Bible story of how God formed Adam from the dust of the ground.

I reckon the widow or the parson or somebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it have gone and done it. So there ain’t no doubt but there is something in that thing. That is, there’s something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don’t work for me, and I reckon it don’t work for only just the right kind.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 8. Huck’s faith continues to grow. Hidden in a river-island, half-famished, he manages to fish a floating loaf of bread – somebody prayed for that bread to find him, he believes.

After breakfast I wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he come to be killed, but Jim didn’t want to. He said it would fetch bad luck; and besides, he said, he might come and ha’nt us; he said a man that warn’t buried was more likely to go a-ha’nting around than one that was planted and comfortable.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 10. Huck wanted to talk about the dead man, but a superstitious Jim avoided the subject saying it would bring bad luck and the man could haunt them.

I’ve always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off of the shot-tower, and spread himself out so that he was just a kind of a layer, as you may say; and they slid him edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but I didn’t see it. Pap told me. But anyway it all come of looking at the moon that way, like a fool.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 10. Huck quotes a story from Pap Finn about the superstition of looking at the moon the wrong way and suffering tragic bad luck as a result.

“I doan k’yer what de widder say, he warn’t no wise man, nuther. He had some er de dad-fetchedes’ ways I ever see. Does you know ’bout dat chile dat he ‘uz gwyne to chop in two?”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 14. Jim doesn’t care what the Widow Douglas told Huck about Solomon being the wisest man, he is not impressed with his child-chopping. This is an allusion to a Bible story in I Kings 3:16-28, in which the wise King Solomon resolves a dispute between two women over a child by suggesting to cut the child in two.

There was some books too, piled up perfectly exact, on each corner of the table. One was a big family Bible, full of pictures. One was ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ about a man that left his family it didn’t say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 17. In the Grangerford home the perfect placement of the books, including the Bible, suggests that they were seldom read and were meant more for display. Pilgrim’s Progress is an allusion to the John Bunyan allegorical novel about a Christian’s spiritual journey towards heaven.

Col. Grangerford was a gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all over; and so was his family. He was well born, as the saying is, and that’s worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow Douglas said, and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our town.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 18. Huck believes the Grangerfords are the perfect Christian family, yet they turn out to be hypocritics. They and the Shepherdsons only take a break from their murderous feud to attend church on Sundays and then continue to carry their guns.

Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody a-horse-back. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching – all about brotherly love, and such like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith, and good works, and free grace, and preforeordestination, and I don’t know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 18. Worshippers with guns listening to a sermon on brotherly love! In his own naive way, Huck reveals the hypocrisy of the Grangerford’s and Shepherdson’s Christianity. The garbled term preforeordestination is an allusion to predestination, a doctrine that God ordained all that will happen.

The first shed we come to the preacher was lining out a hymn. He lined out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it, there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then he lined out two more for them to sing – and so on. The people woke up more and more, and sung louder and louder; and towards the end some begun to groan, and some begun to shout. Then the preacher begun to preach, and begun in earnest, too; and went weaving first to one side of the platform and then the other, and then a-leaning down over the front of it, with his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out with all his might; and every now and then he would hold up his Bible and spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and that, shouting, “It’s the brazen serpent in the wilderness! Look upon it and live!” And people would shout out, “Glory!- A-a-MEN!” And so he went on, and the people groaning and crying and saying amen.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 20. This passage depicts a level of religious fervor and excitement verging on hysteria. Is the author poking fun at the religious revival meeting, or seeing something genuine and good in it? The serpent reference is an allusion to various Bible passages in both the Old and New Testament (Numbers 21:8-9 and John 3:14).

And so on. You couldn’t make out what the preacher said any more, on account of the shouting and crying. Folks got up everywheres in the crowd, and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners’ bench, with the tears running down their faces; and when all the mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung and shouted and flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 20. This passage depicts the chaos and disorder present in religion, especially at this religious revival meeting in the woods. So much so that nobody can even hear what the preacher is saying.

And the minute the words were out of his mouth somebody over in the crowd struck up the doxolojer, and everybody joined in with all their might, and it just warmed you up and made you feel as good as church letting out. Music is a good thing; and after all that soul-butter and hogwash I never see it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and bully.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 25. Disgusted after the King’s speech over the coffin of Peter Wilks, pretending to be his brother, Huck tells how music unifies the crowd and changes the vibe into a feel-good one, just like in church. Doxolojer is an allusion to the doxology, a short hymn of praises to God.

Pray for me! I reckoned if she knowed me she’d take a job that was more nearer her size. But I bet she done it, just the same – she was just that kind. She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notion – there warn’t no back-down to her, I judge.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 28. Huck on Mary Jane Wilks, who is so moved by Huck’s admission about the conmen duo and him helping her, that she promises to pray for him. The quote is an allusion to Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Christ in the Bible. Huck feels he is a Judas to society for helping slave Jim escape.

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.

When I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and sunshiny; the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody’s dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it’s spirits whispering – spirits that’s been dead ever so many years – and you always think they’re talking about you. As a general thing it makes a body wish he was dead, too, and done with it all.

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 32. When Huck comes across the Phelps farm he gets a sense of spirits whispering and a Sunday-like feeling. Huck believes that religion is not just found in church, but can be found anywhere you want it to be found.

“No’m, I’m honest about it; I won’t ever do it again – till you ask me.”
“Till I ask you! Well, I never see the beat of it in my born days! I lay you’ll be the Methusalem – numskull of creation before ever I ask you – or the likes of you.”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 33. A shocked Aunt Sally to nephew Tom Sawyer, whom she doesn’t recognize and is pretending to be William Thompson, after he kisses her full on the mouth. Methuselah is an allusion to the longest-living person in the Bible, who, according to Genesis, lived for 969 years.
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