Mark Twain

“ The professor was standing still all this time like he was asleep, but he broke loose, now, and he was mighty bitter. He says something like this:
"Idiots! they said it wouldn't go. And they wanted to examine it and spy around and get the secret of it out of me. But I beat them. Nobody knows the secret but me! Nobody knows what makes it move but me; and it's a new power! A new power, and a thousand times the strongest in the earth. Steam's foolishness to it! They said I couldn't go to Europe. To Europe! Why, there's power aboard to last five years, and food for three months. ”

“ He made Tom steer the ship all about and every which way, and learnt him the whole thing in nearly no time, and Tom said it was perfectly easy. He made him fetch the ship down 'most to the earth, and had him spin her along so close to the Illinois prairies that a body could talk to the farmers, and hear everything they said perfectly plain; and he flung out printed bills to them that told about the balloon, and said it was going to Europe. Tom got so he could steer straight for a tree till he got nearly to it and then dart up and skin right along over the top of it. ”

“ The houses got smaller and smaller, and the city pulled itself together closer and closer, and the men and wagons got to looking like ants and bugs crawling about, and the streets like cracks and threads ”

“ The Widder Douglas always told me the world was round like a ball, but I never took no stock in a lot of them superstitions o' hern, and of course I paid no attention to that one because I could see myself that the world was the shape of a plate, and flat. ”

“ I used to go up on the hill and take a look around and prove it for myself, because I reckon the best way to get a sure thing on a fact is to go and examine for yourself and not take it on anybody's say-so. ”

“ He give us something to eat, and made us go to the other end of the boat, and he laid down on a locker, where he could boss all the works, and put his old pepper-box revolver under his head, and said if anybody come fooling around there trying to land her he would kill him. ”

“ It made him hot to hear them, and he would turn on them and shake his fist and say they was animals and blind, but some day they would find they'd stood face to face with one of the men that lifts up nations and makes civilizations, and was too dull to know it ”

“ Don' you budge, Tom Sawyer."
And Jim—well, Jim was kind of gasping, he was so scared. He says:
"Oh, Mars Tom, don't! Ef you tetches him, we's gone—we's gone, sho'! I ain't gwyne anear him, not for nothin' in dis worl'. Mars Tom, he's plumb crazy."
Tom whispers and says:
"That's why we've got to do something. If he wasn't crazy I wouldn't give shucks to be anywhere but here; you couldn't hire me to get out, now that I've got used to this balloon and over the scare of being cut loose from the solid ground, if he was in his right mind ”