Mark Twain

“ Then they went down and had a swim, and then Tom came up and spelled me, and me and Jim had a swim, and then Jim spelled Tom, and me and Tom had a foot-race and a boxing-mill, and I don't reckon I ever had such a good time in my life. It warn't so very hot, because it was close on to evening, and we hadn't any clothes on, anyway. Clothes is well enough in school, and in towns, and at balls, too, but there ain't no sense in them when there ain't no civilization nor other kinds of bothers and fussiness around. ”

“ In the Middle Ages, in France, when the grasshoppers started in to eat up the crops, the bishop would go out in the fields and pull a solemn face and give them a most solid good cussing. Just the way they done with a Jew or a heretic or a king, as I was telling you."
"And what did the grasshoppers do, Tom?"
"Just laughed, and went on and et up the crop, same as they started in to do. The difference betwixt a man and a grasshopper, in the Middle Ages, was that the grasshopper warn't a fool."
"Oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness gracious, dah's de lake agi'n!" yelled Jim, just then. ”

“ It warn't no frivolous random cussing, like Ben Miller's, that starts in anywheres and comes out nowheres—it was scientific cussing, and systematic; and it was stern, and solemn, and awful—not a thing for you to stand off and laugh at, the way people does when that poor ignorant Ben Miller gits a-going. Why, Ben Miller's kind can stand up and cuss a person a week, steady, and it wouldn’t phaze him no more than a goose cackling ”

“ You have to come down lower and lower after sundown in the Desert, because it cools off so fast; and so by the time it is getting towards dawn you are skimming along only a little ways above the sand. ”

“ Land! that was cussing worth talking about; that was the only cussing worth shucks that's ever been done in this world—the man it fell on, or the country it fell on, would better 'a' been dead forty times over. Ben Miller! The idea of him thinking he can cuss! Why, the poorest little one-horse back-country bishop in the Middle Ages could cuss all around him. We don't know nothing about cussing nowadays. ”

“ As for the clothes, they warn't any any more. Every last rag of them was inside of the animals; and not agreeing with them very well, I don't reckon, for there was considerable many brass buttons on them, and there was knives in the pockets, too, and smoking-tobacco, and nails and chalk and marbles and fishhooks and things. ”

“ P'r'aps they do in Peru, but amongst people that knows anything it's played out, and they don't mind it no more than they do Ben Miller's kind. It's because they've got so far along that they know as much now as the grasshoppers did in the Middle Ages. ”