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• Adam and Eve, according to the fable, wore the bower before other clothes. Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.
  • Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

• Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principle one was that they escaped teething.
  • Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

• Adam and Noah were ancestors of mine. I never thought much of them. Adam lacked character. He couldn't be trusted with apples. Noah had an absurd idea that he could navigate without any knowledge of navigation, and he ran into the only shoal place on earth.
  • Mark Twain, Speech, November 9, 1901. Reported in The New York Times, November 10, 1901

• “Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived.” It is a pity that this is still the only knowledge of their wives at which some men seem to arrive.
  • F. H. Bradley, Aphorisms, no. 94 (1930)

• Adam, man's benefactor — he gave him all he has ever received that was worth having — Death.
  • Mark Twain Notebook, 1902-1903

• Adam was but human — this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.
  • Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)

• After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.
  • Mark Twain, Extracts from Adam's Diary (1904)

• Ever since Eve gave Adam the apple, there has been a misunderstanding between the sexes about gifts.
  • Nan Robertson, New York Times (November 28, 1957)

• Had Adam tenderly reproved his wife, and endeavored to lead her to repentance instead of sharing in her guilt, I should be much more ready to accord to man that superiority which he claims; but as the facts stand disclosed by the sacred historian, it appears to me that to say the least, there was as much weakness exhibited by Adam as by Eve. They both fell from innocence, and consequently from happiness, but not from equality.
  • Sarah Grimké, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman, letter #1: dated July 11, 1837 (1838)

• It all began with Adam. He was the first man to tell a joke — or a lie. How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before. Adam was not alone in the Garden of Eden, however, and does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first consultant.
  • Mark Twain, Notebook, 1867

• Let us be thankful to Adam our benefactor. He cut us out of the 'blessing' of idleness and won for us the 'curse' of labor.
  • Mark Twain, Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar

• That was the birth of sin. Not doing it, but KNOWING about it. Before the apple, [Adam and Eve] had shut their eyes and their minds had gone dark. Now, they peeped and pried and imagined. They watched themselves.
  • D. H. Lawrence, “Nathaniel Hawthorne and ‘The Scarlet Letter’,” Studies in Classic American Literature, ch. 7 (1923)

• The Lord made Adam, the Lord made Eve, he made ‘em both a little bit naive.
  • Yip Harburg, “The Begat,” Finian’s Rainbow (1947)

• The true unconscious is the well-head, the fountain of real motivity. The sex of which Adam and Eve became conscious derived from the very God who bade them be not conscious of it.
  • D. H. Lawrence, Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious, ch. 1 (1921)

• Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.
  • Mark Twain, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson and The Comedy of the Extraordinary Twins