Best 27 quotes in «tact quotes» category

If you never stepped on anybody's toes, you never been for a walk.

Tact does for life just what lubricating oil does for machinery.

I have tales to tell, but I don't tell them. Discretion. Discretion.

Tact is the ability to make a person see lightning without letting him feel the bolt.

Tact is the unsaid part of what you think.

It is not always the highest talent that thrives best. Mediocrity, with tact, will outweigh talent oftentimes.

Tact is for people with too much damned time on their hands.

Tact is good taste in action.

Ugliness without tact is horrible.

Talent without tact is only half talent.

What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact.

Arrogance, disrespect and demand have higher price. Kindness, respect and tact give better prize.

Women and foxes, being weak, are distinguished by superior tact.

Diplomacy is the art of recognizing all colors and knowing how to mix them up and bring them back as they were first.

Dr. Cox: Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present, Man Not Caring. [points to self]

The true gentleman is subtly poised between an inner tact and an outer defense.

I'm accustomed to reading Georgian and Victorian letters and sometimes you simply know in your gut that a blithe sentence is covering up a deeper emotion.

...[F]rom me you shall hear the whole truth; not, I can assure you, gentlemen, in flowery language... decked out with fine words and phrases; no, what you will hear will be a straightforward speech in the first words that occur to me, confident as I am in the justice of my cause; and I do not want any of you to expect anything different.

In any case, I hadn’t gone into the subject of dorm living too deeply with him, not because I hesitated to probe his tender spots but because I would have been probing my own. This is called tact, and is reputed to be a virtue.

...[S]ome of the opinions which people entertain should be respected, and others should not.

Only a writer "with Bennett's craft and brass could manage to praise and insult his readers at the same time.

Tact is the ability to formulate your thoughts, carefully choose your words and effectively communicate them without offending anyone. This is the most difficult skill to achieve, the best skill anyone can possess, and the most important skill in our daily lives.

I picked up the large lapel button richly worked in purple, green and yellow plastic. 'January 1997,' it announced, 'Day of Visionaries.' Beneath the slogan was a portrait of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. And next to him, sharing the billing as it were, was a same-size picture of our newly elected President. And below was the official logo of the inauguration committee. I’m sorry, but that’s too much. Much too much. I can tune out the Chief Executive when he drivels on about building a bridge to Newt Gingrich. I can be shaking a cocktail or grilling a lobster when he intones that 'nothing big ever came from being small.' I can be receiving a telephone call in a foreign language and still keep up with him when he says that the future lies before us, and the past behind, and that we must light the torch of knowledge from the fountain of wisdom (or whatever). As Orwell once remarked, after a point you stop noticing that you have said things like 'The jackboot is thrown into the melting pot,’ or 'The fascist octopus has sung its swansong.' Motor-mouth and automatic pilot and sheer flatulence and conceit supply their own mediocre, infinitely renewable energy. But this cheap, cheery little button turned the scale. It’s one thing to be bored, or subjected to boredom. It’s another to be insulted. This is a pot of piss flung in the face. What does it take to get people disgusted these days?

Tact: the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

The most difficult task in leadership, which is one of the greatest challenges is the task of finding the reins of the soul.

The sea is a lonely and hostile place, Captain,' Jansen said coldly. 'It is always best not to make enemies of those who might be your friends. You never know when your ships may cross

Tact is an ability to live in the midst of ugliness without getting ugly.