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 Copy Share Image
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 for every natural act. — Booth Tarkington Copy Share Image
The only good in pretending is the fun we get out of fooling ourselves that we fool somebody. — Booth Tarkington Copy Share Image
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… — Booth Tarkington Copy Share
Take your work seriously but never take yourself seriously and do not take what happens either to yourself or your work seriously. — Booth Tarkington Copy Share Image
“My wife says Ambersons don’t make lettuce salad the way other people do; they don’t chop it up with sugar and vinegar at all. They pour olive oil on it with their vinegar, and they have it separate—not along with the rest of the meal. And they eat these olives, too: green things they are, something like a hard plum,… — Booth Tarkington Copy Share
The only safe male rebuke to a scornful female is to stay away from her - especially if that is what she desires. — Booth Tarkington Copy Share Image
Some day the laws of glamour must be discovered, because they are so important that the world would be wiser now if Sir Isaac… — Booth Tarkington Copy Share Image
The understanding smile of an old wife to her husband is one of the loveliest things in the world. — Booth Tarkington Copy Share Image
