Booth Tarkington Quotes & Sayings

He had not yet learned that the only safe male rebuke to a scornful female is to stay away from her - especially if that is what she desires. — Booth Tarkington

Youth cannot imagine romance apart from youth. That is why the roles of the heroes and heroines of plays are given by the managers to the most youthful actors they can find among the competent. — Booth Tarkington

An ideal wife is any woman who has an ideal husband. — Booth Tarkington

Like so many women for whom money has always been provided without their understanding how, she was prepared to be a thorough and irresponsible plunger. — Booth Tarkington

There are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink. — Booth Tarkington

Mystics always hope that science will some day overtake them. — Booth Tarkington

Whatever does not pretend at all has style enough. — Booth Tarkington

I suppose about the only good in pretending is the fun we get out of fooling ourselves that we fool somebody. — Booth Tarkington

As with husbands and wives, so with many fathers and daughters, and so with some sons and mothers: the man will himself be cross in public and think nothing of it, nor will he greatly mind a little crossness on the part of the woman; but let her show agitation before any spectator, he is instantly reduced to a coward's slavery. Women understand that ancient weakness, of course; for it is one of their most important means of defense, but can be used ignobly. — Booth Tarkington

Arguments only confirm people in their own opinions. — Booth Tarkington

Magnificence, like the size of a fortune, is always comparative, as even Magnificent Lorenzo may now perceive, if he has happened to haunt New York in 1916; and the Ambersons were magnificent in their day and place. Their — Booth Tarkington

Christmas day is the children's, but the holidays are youth's dancing-time. — Booth Tarkington

I'm not so sure he's wrong about automobiles," he said, "With all their speed forward they may be a step backward for civilization-that is, spiritual civilization ... But automobiles have come, and they bring a greater change in our life than most of us expect. They are here, and almost all outward things are going to be different because of what they bring. They are going to alter war, and they are going to alter peace. — Booth Tarkington

Take your work seriously but never take yourself seriously and do not take what happens either to yourself or your work seriously. — Booth Tarkington

Some day the laws of glamour must be discovered, because they are so important that the world would be wiser now if Sir Isaac Newton had been hit on the head, not by an apple, but by a young lady. — Booth Tarkington

There aren't any old times. When times are gone they're not old, they're dead! There aren't any times but new times! — Booth Tarkington

At twenty-one or twenty-two so many things appear solid and permanent and terrible which forty sees are nothing but disappearing miasma. Forty can't tell twenty about this; that's the pity of it! Twenty can find out only by getting to be forty. — Booth Tarkington

There is a fertile stretch of flat lands in Indiana where unagarian Eastern travelers, glancing from car windows, shudder and return their eyes to interior upholstery, preferring even the swaying comparisons of a Pullman to the monotony without. — Booth Tarkington

Not quite so long ago as a generation, there was no panting giant here, no heaving, grimy city . . . there was time to live. — Booth Tarkington

They were upon their great theme: "When I get to be a man!" Being human, though boys, they considered their present estate too commonplace to be dwelt upon. So, when the old men gather, they say: "When I was a boy!" It really is the land of nowadays that we never discover. — Booth Tarkington

It was annoying how her voice, though never loud, pursued him. No matter how vociferous were other voices, all about, he seemed unable to prevent himself from constantly recognizing hers. — Booth Tarkington

Destiny has a constant passion for the incongruous. — Booth Tarkington

I'm not sure he's wrong about automobiles," he said. "With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization
that is, in spiritual civilization. It may be that they will not add to the beauty of the world, nor to the life of men's souls. — Booth Tarkington

I always thought that explained it: the romance is a reaction from the algebra. I never knew a person connected with mathematics or astronomy or statistics, or any of those exact things, who didn't have a crazy streak in 'em SOMEwhere. — Booth Tarkington

So long as we can lose any happiness, we possess some. — Booth Tarkington

It is the liveliest time in life, the happiest of the irresponsible times in life. Mothers echo its happiness - nothing is like a mother who has a son home from college, except another mother with a son home from college. Bloom does actually come upon these mothers; it is a visible thing; and they run like girls, walk like athletes, laugh like sycophants. Yet they give up their sons to the daughters of other mothers, and find it proud rapture enough to be allowed to sit and watch. — Booth Tarkington

No doubt it is true that there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repented than over all the saints who consistently remain holy, and the rare, sudden gentlenesses of arrogant people have infinitely more effect than the continual gentleness of gentle people. Arrogance turned gentle melts the heart. — Booth Tarkington

Nobody has a good name in a bad mouth. Nobody has a good name in a silly mouth either. — Booth Tarkington

I mean the things that we have and that we think are so solid - they're like smoke, and time is like the sky that the smoke disappears into. You know how wreath of smoke goes up from a chimney, and seems all thick and black and busy against the sky, as if it were going to do such important things and last forever, and you see it getting thinner and thinner - and then, in such a little while, it isn't there at all; nothing is left but the sky, and the sky keeps on being just the same forever. — Booth Tarkington

We debate sometimes what is to be the future of this nation when we think that in a few years public affairs may be in the hands of the fin-de-siecle gilded youths we see about us during the Christmas holidays. Such foppery, such luxury, such insolence,was surely never practiced by the scented, overbearing patricians of the Palatine, even in Rome's most decadent epoch. In all the wild orgy of wastefulness and luxury with which the nineteenth century reaches its close, the gilded youth has been surely the worst symptom. — Booth Tarkington

This is a boy's lot: anything he does, anything whatever, may afterward turn out to have been a crime - he never knows. And punishment and clemency are alike inexplicable. — Booth Tarkington

You see?" she said. "I've been leading you without you knowing it. Of course that's because you're new to the town, and you give yourself up to the guidance of an old citizen."
"I'm not so sure, Miss Adams. It might mean that I don't care where I follow so long as I follow you. — Booth Tarkington

Men were just like sheep, and nothing was easier than for women to set up as shepherds and pen them up in a field. — Booth Tarkington

One of the hardest conditions of boyhood is the almost continuous strain put upon the powers of invention by the constant and harassing necessity for explanations of every natural act. — Booth Tarkington

Mothers see the angel in us because the angel is there. If it's shown to the mother, the son has got an angel to show, hasn't he? When a son cuts somebody's throat the mother only sees it's possible for a misguided angel to act like a devil - and she's entirely right about that! — Booth Tarkington

It is love in old age, no longer blind, that is true love. For the love's highest intensity doesn't necessarily mean it's highest quality. — Booth Tarkington

Superciliousness is not safe after all, because a person who forms the habit of wearing it may some day find his lower lip grown permanently projected beyond the upper, so that he can't get it back, and must go through life looking like the King of Spain. — Booth Tarkington

My theory on literature is an author who does not indulge in trashiness-writes about people you could introduce into your own home ... he did not care to read a book or go to a play about people he would not care to meet at his own dinner table. I believe we should live by certain standards and ideals ... — Booth Tarkington

Gossip is never fatal until it is denied. — Booth Tarkington

Boyhood is the longest time in life for a boy. The last term of the school-year is made of decades, not of weeks, and living through them is like waiting for the millennium. — Booth Tarkington

Is this life?'Alice wondered, not doubting that the question was original and all her own. 'Is it life to spend your time imagining things that aren't so, and never will be? Beautiful things happen to other people; why should I be the only one they never can happen to? — Booth Tarkington

In the days before deathly contrivances hustled them through their lives, and when they had no telephones - another ancient vacancy profoundly responsible for leisure - they had time for everything: time to think, to talk, time to read, time to wait for a lady! — Booth Tarkington

The understanding smile of an old wife to her husband is one of the loveliest things in the world. — Booth Tarkington

So far as Alice was concerned Russell might have worn a placard,'Engaged'. She looked upon him as diners entering a restaurant look upon tables marked 'Reserved: the glance, slightly discontented, passes on at once. — Booth Tarkington