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This is a boy's lot: anything he does, anything whatever, may afterward turn out to have been a crime - he never knows. And punishment and clemency are alike inexplicable.

Booth Tarkington

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Booth Tarkington
Age: 76 †
Born: 1869
Born: July 29
Died: 1946
Died: May 19
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Indianapolis
Indiana
Newton Booth Tarkington
Turns
Clemency
Whatever
Afterward
Doe
Inexplicable
Anything
Alike
May
Punishment
Never
Crime
Boys
Turn

More quotes by Booth Tarkington

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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
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Some day the laws of glamour must be discovered, because they are so important that the world would be wiser now if Sir Isaac Newton had been hit on the head, not by an apple, but by a young lady.
Booth Tarkington
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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.
Booth Tarkington
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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.
Booth Tarkington
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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
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Youth cannot imagine romance apart from youth.
Booth Tarkington
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Mystics always hope that science will some day overtake them.
Booth Tarkington
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So long as we can lose any happiness, we possess some.
Booth Tarkington
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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's entirely right about that!
Booth Tarkington
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Nobody has a good name in a bad mouth. Nobody has a good name in a silly mouth either.
Booth Tarkington
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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.
Booth Tarkington
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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
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An ideal wife is any woman who has an ideal husband.
Booth Tarkington
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Take your work seriously but never take yourself seriously and do not take what happens either to yourself or your work seriously.
Booth Tarkington
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Gossip is never fatal until it is denied.
Booth Tarkington
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The understanding smile of an old wife to her husband is one of the loveliest things in the world.
Booth Tarkington
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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.
Booth Tarkington
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Arguments only confirm people in their own opinions.
Booth Tarkington
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Whatever does not pretend at all has style enough.
Booth Tarkington
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Destiny has a constant passion for the incongruous.
Booth Tarkington