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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“Arguments only confirm people in their own opinions.”

“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...”