71 Quotes by Booth Tarkington

Take your work seriously but never take yourself seriously; and do not take what happens either to yourself or your work seriously

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.

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

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.

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

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 aren’t any old times. When times are gone they’re not old, they’re dead! There aren’t any times but new times!

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.

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.