Tact Quotes - Page 2

• Truth or tact? You have to choose. Most times they're not compatible. It's so hard to draw the line.

  Eddie Cantor

  Compatible

  "Harriet the Spy".

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• Without tact you can learn nothing.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Inquirers

  Benjamin Disraeli, Edmund Gosse, Robert Arnot (1904). “The works of Benjamin Disraeli, earl of Beaconsfield: embracing novels, romances, plays, poems, biography, short stories and great speeches”

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• If you use tact you can say anything, then make it funny.

  Dane Cook

  Funny, Say Anything, Use

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• Tact is not a small thing; in the battle of life it is more powerful than a bludgeon.

  Arthur Lynch

  Life, Powerful, Battle

  Arthur Lynch (1921). “Moods of Life: Popular Psychological Studies of Affairs of Every Day”

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• The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Courtesy, Holmes, Relation

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• Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Friendship, Relationship, Courtesy

  Oliver Wendell Holmes (2007). “Autocrat Of The Breakfast Table”, p.51, Reprint Services Corporation

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• Tact is to lie about others as you would have them lie about you.

  Oliver Herford

  Lying

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• Perseverance and tact are the two great qualities most valuable for all those who would climb, but especially for those who have to step out of the crowd.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Perseverance, Two, Quality

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

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Toes, Walks, Ifs

  Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “High Tide in Tucson”, p.38, Faber & Faber

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• 

  Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings.

  David Sedaris

  Funny Love, Hurt, Real

  «At The Movies With David & Sarah» by David Sedaris, www.esquire.com. January 29, 2007.

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• Tact is one of the first of mental virtues, the absence of which is frequently fatal to the best of talents. Without denying that it is a talent of itself, it will suffice if we admit that it supplies the place of many talents.

  William Gilmore Simms

  Firsts, Talent, Virtue

  "Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside".

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• Tact is after all a kind of mind reading.

  Sarah Orne Jewett

  Inspirational, Reading, Memorable

  Sarah Orne Jewett (1997). “The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories”, p.73, UPNE

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• Tact is the discrimination of differences. It consists in conscious deviations.

  Theodor Adorno

  Differences, Discrimination, Conscious

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.37, Verso

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• Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.

  Warren W. Wiersbe

  Truth, Love Is, Hypocrisy

  Warren W. Wiersbe (2011). “On Being a Leader for God”, p.39, Baker Books

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• The trouble with cats is that they've got no tact.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Cat, Animal, Trouble

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• I hate the way, once you start to know someone, care about them, their behavior can distress you, even when it's unreasonable and not your fault, even if you were really trying to be careful, tactful.

  Tanith Lee

  Hate, Trying, Care

  Tanith Lee (2002). “The Claidi journals”

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• The offender needs pity, not wrath; those who must needs be corrected, should be treated with tact and gentleness; and one must be always ready to learn better. 'The best kind of revenge is, not to become like unto them.'

  Marcus Aurelius

  Revenge, Wrath, Needs

  Marcus Aurelius (2016). “Meditations (Diversion Classics)”, p.13, Diversion Books

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• A spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Food, Catching Fire, Vinegar

  Benjamin Franklin (2004). “Poor Richard's Almanack”, p.117, Barnes & Noble Publishing

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• Some people mistake weakness for tact. If they are silent when they ought to speak and so feign an agreement they do not feel, they call it being tactful. Cowardice would be a much better name. Tact is an active quality t hat is not exercised by merely making a dash for cover. Be sure, when you think you are being extremely tactful, that you are not in reality running away from something you ought to face.

  Frank Medlicott

  Running, Mistake, Reality

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• I always felt that a scientist owes the world only one thing, and that is the truth as he sees it. If the truth contradicts deeply held beliefs, that is too bad. Tact and diplomacy are fine in international relations, in politics, perhaps even in business; in science only one thing matters, and that is the facts.

  Hans Eysenck

  World, Matter, Facts

  Hans Eysenck (2017). “Rebel with a Cause”, p.129, Routledge

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• To act honestly- even at the risk of saying the unpleasant truth, or of saying no and causing distress to others- if done with intelligence and tact, is the kindest thing to do because it respects our own integrity and acknowledges in others the capacity to be competent and mature.

  Piero Ferrucci

  Integrity, Risk, Done

  Piero Ferrucci (2007). “The Power of Kindness: The Unexpected Benefits of Leading a Compassionate Life”, p.35, Penguin

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• Vigilance in watching opportunity, tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity, force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost of possible achievement - these are the martial virtues which must command success

  Austin Phelps

  Inspirational, Persistence, Opportunity

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• A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Men, Order, Grace

  Charles Horton Cooley (1964). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.335, Transaction Publishers

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• It [the pharmaceutical industry] is the most profitable industry in the world, and partially funds the US government. It surpasses oil in terms of profits and my country recently went to war due to oil pricing. What does that say they will do to keep this other industry in tact? It is up to patients and their families to question what they are being given, and to consumers to demand better, more natural alternatives.

  Margot Kidder

  Country, War, Government

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• Experience was to be taken as showing that one might get a five-pound note as one got a light for a cigarette; but one had to check the friendly impulse to ask for it in the same way.

  Henry James

  Taken, Light, Friendly

  Henry James (2015). “The Complete Novels of Henry James: The Portrait of a Lady + The Wings of the Dove + What Maisie Knew + The American + The Bostonian + The Ambassadors + Washington Square and more (Unabridged): Confidence + Roderick Hudson + The Awkward Age + The Europeans + The Golden Bowl + The Other House + The Outcry + The Princess Casamassima + The Reverberator + The Sacred Fount….”, p.1104, e-artnow

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