A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court Events Quotes

Chapter 2

They are white Indians. (2.8)

Chapter 3

[B]rains were not needed in a society like that, and indeed would have marred it, hindered it, spoiled its symmetry—perhaps rendered its existence impossible. (3.2)

Chapter 5

It came into my mind in the nick of time, how Columbus, or Cortez, or one of those people, played an eclipse as a saving trump once, on some savages, and I saw my chance. (5.6)

Chapter 6

"Banish this calamity, spare the sun!" (6.6)

Chapter 7

We made a few bushels of first-rate blasting powder, and I superintended my armorers while they constructed a lightning-rod and some wires. (7.5)

Chapter 8

I couldn't have felt really and satisfactorily fine and proud and set-up over any title except one that should come from the nation itself, the only legitimate source. (8.7)

Chapter 9

The very first official thing I did, in my administration—and it was on the very first day of it, too—was to start a patent office; for I knew that a country without a patent office and good pa...

Chapter 10

My works showed what a despot could do with the resources of a kingdom at his command. (10.3)

Chapter 11

The king and the whole Round Table were in raptures over this preposterous opportunity for adventure. (11.2)

Chapter 13

They were freemen, but they could not leave the estates of their lord or their bishop without his permission. (13.5)

Chapter 14

These big children, their fears gone, became so ravished with wonder over my awe-compelling fireworks that I had to stay there and smoke a couple of pipes out before they would let me go. (14.2)

Chapter 16

Any Established Church is an established crime, an established slave-pen. (16.2)

Chapter 17

"It's a Factory where I'm going to turn groping and grubbing automata into men." (17.11)

Chapter 18

A master might kill his slave for nothing—for mere spite, malice, or to pass the time. (18.4)

Chapter 19

They had been heritors and subjects of cruelty and outrage so long that nothing could have startled them but a kindness. (19.4)

Chapter 20

I was ashamed of her, ashamed of the human race. (20.8)

Chapter 21

If I also would be sane—to Sandy—I must keep my superstitions about unenchanted and unmiraculous locomotives, balloons, and telephones, to myself. (21.2)

Chapter 22

The "fountain" was an ordinary well, it had been dug in the ordinary way, and stoned up in the ordinary way. There was no miracle about it. (22.5)

Chapter 23

We put in a little iron pump, one of the first turned out by my works near the capital. (23.4)

Chapter 24

"If the king does not arrive, I will have myself ridden on a rail: if he does I will ride you on a rail instead." (24.13)

Chapter 25

One needs but to hear an aristocrat speak of the classes that are below him to recognize—and in but indifferently modified measure—the very air and tone of the actual slaveholder. (25.2)

Chapter 26

Wherever you find a king who can't cure the king's-evil you can be sure that the most valuable superstition that supports his throne—the subject's belief in the divine appointment of his sovereig...

Chapter 27

As a rule, the speech and behavior of these people were gracious and courtly; and I noticed that they were good and serious listeners when anybody was telling anything—I mean in a dog-fightless i...

Chapter 28

I drilled him as representing in turn all sorts of people out of luck and suffering dire privations and misfortunes. But lord, it was only just words, words—they meant nothing in the world to him...

Chapter 30

It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when the "poor whites" of our South who were always despised and frequently insulted by the slave-lords around them, and who owed their base condit...

Chapter 33

What those people valued was high wages; it didn't seem to be a matter of any consequence to them whether the high wages would buy anything or not. (33.7)

Chapter 34

SLAVES! The word had a new sound—and how unspeakably awful! (34.12)

Chapter 38

It was fine to see that astonished multitude go down on their knees and beg their lives of the king they had just been deriding and insulting. (38.3)

Chapter 39

The next moment the rope sprang taut and yanked Sir Sagramor out of the saddle! (39.7)

Chapter 40

Slavery was dead and gone; all men were equal before the law; taxation had been equalized. (40.2)

Chapter 41

"Hello-Central!" (41.2)

Chapter 42

"Why did you select boys?""Because all the others were born in an atmosphere of superstition and reared in it." (42.9-10)

Chapter 43

We fifty-four were masters of England. Twenty-five thousand men lay dead around us. (43.17)