Explore Quotes by Booth Tarkington

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.

Cherish all your happy moments; they make a fine cushion for old age.

Arguments only confirm people in their own opinions.

An ideal wife is any woman who has an ideal husband.

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.

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

Youth cannot imagine romance apart from youth.

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.

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

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.

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

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, nothing is left but the sky, and the sky keeps on being just the same forever.

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

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.

Mystics always hope that science will some day overtake them.

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

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.

Gossip is never fatal until it is denied.

Gossip is never fatal until it is denied. Gossip goes on about every human being alive and about all the dead that are alive enough to be remembered, and yet almost never does any harm until some defender makes a controversy. Gossip's a nasty thing, but it's sickly, and if people of good intentions will let it entirely alone, it will die, ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

Nobody has a good name in a bad mouth. Nobody has a good name in a silly mouth either.

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.