Johnny Tremain Quotes

Introduction

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes is a classic book containing many great quotations. Below you will find some of the best quotes from Johnny Tremain with the chapter provided.

Johnny and Rab in the 1957
Johnny Tremain movie

Quotes from the Book Johnny Tremain

"Just like the sun coming up yonder out of the sea, pushing rays of light ahead of it." - Chapter 1

"His ability made him semi-sacred. He knew his power and reveled in it. He could have easily made friends with stupid Dove, for Dove was lonely and admired Johnny as well as envied him. Johnny preferred to bully him." - Chapter 1

"Mr. Lapham was always telling him to give God thanks who had seen fit to make him so good an artisan - not to take it out in lording it over the other boys. That was one of the things Johnny 'did not let bother him much.'" - Chapter 1

"Seemingly in one month he had become a stranger, an outcast on Hancock's wharf. He was maimed and they were whole." - Chapter 2

"His unhappiness was so great he felt himself completely cut off from the rest of the world." - Chapter 3

"As he talked to Rab (for the boy had told him this was his name), for the first time since the accident he felt able to stand aside from his problems - see himself." - Chapter 3

"After that Johnny began to watch himself. For the first time he learned to think before he spoke." - Chapter 5

"This praise went to Johnny's head, but patterning his manners on Rab's he tried not to show it." - Chapter 5

"He loved Cilla. She and Rab were the best friends he had ever had. Why was he mean to her? He couldn't think." - Chapter 6

"And in a way he had died in that room; at least something had happened and the bright little silversmith's apprentice was no more. He stood here again at the threshold, but now he was somebody else." - Chapter 7

"Never had Johnny seen Rab so bothered about anything as he was over his inability to get himself a good modern gun. 'I don't mind their shooting at me,' he would say to Johnny, 'and I don't mind shooting at them... but God give me a gun in my hands that can do better than knock over a rabbit at ten feet.'" - Chapter 7

"This closing of the port of Boston was indeed tyranny; this was oppression; this was the last straw upon the back of many a moderate man." - Chapter 7

"How little his mother had known of the working world to make smocks for a boy who she knew was to become a silversmith! She hadn't known anything, really, of day labor, the life of apprentices. She had been frail, cast off, sick, and yet she had fought up to the very end for something. That something was himself, and he felt humbled and ashamed." - Chapter 9

"Pumpkin had wanted so little out of life. A farm. Cows. True, Rab had got the musket he craved, but Pumpkin wasn't going to get his farm. Nothing more than a few feet by a few feet at the foot of Boston Common. That much Yankee land he'd hold to Judgement Day." - Chapter 9

"Men went to war and women wept. All was as it should be." - Chapter 11

"So fair a day now drawing to its close. Green with spring, dreaming of the future yet wet with blood." - Chapter 12

"True, Rab had died. Hundreds would die, but not the thing they died for. 'A man can stand up.'" - Chapter 12

Quotes by Johnny Tremain

"So all he did was hurt your feelings." - Chapter 8

"A boy in time of peace and a man in time of war." - Chapter 11

"And some of us would die - so other men can stand up on their feet like men. A great many are going to die for that. They have in the past. They will a hundred years from now - two hundred. God grant there will always be men good enough. Men like Rab." - Chapter 12

Quotes by Rab Silsbee

"But I can't stand men like Lyte, who care nothing for anything except themselves and their own fortune." - Chapter 4

"Johnny Tremain is a bold fellow. I knew he could learn - if he didn't get killed first. It was sink or swim for him - and happens he's swimming." - Chapter 5

"The Observer is to be half-size. He won't give up. He'll keep on printing, printing and printing about our wrongs - and our rights - until he drops dead at his press - or gets hanged." - Chapter 6

"A man can stand up to anything with a good weapon in his hands." - Chapter 8

Quotes by James Otis

"We fight, we die, for a simple thing. Only that a man can stand up." - Chapter 8

"You were right, you tall, dark boy, for even as we shoot down the British soldiers we are fighting for rights such as they will be enjoying a hundred years from now." - Chapter 8

"There shall be no more tyranny. A handful of men cannot seize power over thousands. A man shall choose who it is shall rule over him." - Chapter 8

"The peasants of France, the serfs of Russia. Hardly more than animals now. But because we fight, they shall see freedom like a new sun rising in the west. Those natural rights God has given to every man, no matter how humble." - Chapter 8

"Each shall give according to his own abilities, and some... some will give their lives. All the years of their maturity. All the children they never live to have. The serenity of old age. To die so young is more than merely dying; it is to lose so large a part of life." - Chapter 8

Quotes by Others

"We're both in a tight spot. But if we keep our tempers and you keep your tempers, why, we can fix up things between us somehow. We're all one people, you know." - British medical officer, Chapter 7

"If there were Daughters of Liberty, I'd be one." - Mrs. Bessie, Chapter 7

"You know you have to marry someone whose last name goes with your first." - Cilla Lapham, Chapter 8

First published: April 28th, 2023, Last updated: February 10th, 2024

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