Beth

“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 will die, ninety-nine times out of a hundred.”
― Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons

“Nobody has a good name in a bad mouth. Nobody has a good name in a silly mouth either. ”
― Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons

“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.”
― Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons

“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, The Magnificent Ambersons