Quotes about tact-and-tactfulness

Tact is the art of making guests feel at home when that's really where you wish they were.

— George E. Bergman

It is tact that is golden, not silence.

— Samuel Butler

Silence is not always tact, but it is tact that is golden, not silence.

— Samuel Butler

One shouldn't talk of halters in the hanged man's house.

— Miguel De Cervantes

Tis ill talking of halters in the house of a man that was hanged.

— Miguel De Cervantes

The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society.

— Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort

Tact is knowing how far to go too far.

— Jean Cocteau

Tact in audacity consists in knowing how far we may go too far.

— Jean Cocteau

Euphemisms are not, as many young people think, useless verbiage for that which can and should be said bluntly; they are like secret agents on a delicate mission, they must airily pass by a stinking mess with barely so much as a nod of the head, make their point of constructive criticism and continue on in calm forbearance. Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.

— Quentin Crisp

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

Without tact you can learn nothing. Tact teaches you when to be silent. Inquirers who are always questioning never learn anything.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Franklin

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

— Oliver Herford

The secret of man's success resides in his insight into the mood's of people, and his tact in dealing with them.

— Josiah Gilbert Holland

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

Tact is after all a kind of mind reading.

— Sarah Orne Jewett

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

— Abraham Lincoln

Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.

— Howard W. Newton

Forbear to mention what thou canst not praise.

— Matthew Prior

So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.

— Marquis De Sade

Tis not seasonable to call a man traitor, that has an army at his heels.

— John Selden

Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar.

— William Shakespeare

Tact is one of the first mental virtues, the absence of it is fatal to the best talent.

— William Gilmore Simms

Tact is ability to see others as they wish to be seen.

— Source Unknown

Tact is the intelligence of the heart.

— Source Unknown

To have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact, talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you.

— Oscar Wilde