Quotes by Booth Tarkington

About Booth Tarkington:

Newton Booth Tarkington was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams. He is, with William Faulkner and John Updike, one of only three novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once.
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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 n...

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

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 ...

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 insolen...

Booth Tarkington

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, ...

Booth Tarkington

Whatever does not pretend at all has style enough.

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 beli...

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

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...

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'...

Booth Tarkington

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

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

Arguments only confirm people in their own opinions.

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

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

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

Booth Tarkington

Author Bio

  • NameBooth Tarkington
  • DescriptionAmerican novelist
  • BornJuly 29, 1869
  • DiedMay 19, 1946
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPlaywright; Novelist; Writer