Great Throughts Treasury

"You need more tact in the dangerous art of giving than in any other social action." - William Bolitho, pen name for Charles William Ryall

"Though the noblest disposition you inherit, And your character with piety is pack'd, All such qualities have very little merit unaccompanied by Tact." - Harry Graham, Fully Jocelyn Henry Clive 'Harry' Graham

"Vigilance in watching opportunity; tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost possible achievement - these are the martial virtues which must command success." - Austin Phelps

"Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence." - Samuel Butler

"Grand and manifold as were its phases, there is yet no difficulty in understanding the character of Washington. He was no Veiled Prophet. He never acted a part. Simple, natural, and unaffected, his life lies before us - a fair and open manuscript. He disdained the arts which wrap power in mystery in order to magnify it. He practiced the profound diplomacy of truthful speech - the consummate tact of direct attention. Looking ever to the All-Wise Disposer of events, he relied on that Providence which helps men by giving them high hearts and hopes to help themselves with the means which their Creator has put at their service. There was no infirmity in his conduct over which charity must fling its veil; no taint of selfishness from which purity averts her gaze; no dark recess of intrigue that must be lit up with colored panegyric; no subterranean passage to be trod in trembling, lest there be stirred the ghost of a buried crime." - John W. Daniel, fully John Warwick Daniel

"A politician must often talk and act before he has thought and read. He may be very ill informed respecting a question: all his notions about it may be vague and inaccurate; but speak he must. And if he is a man of ability, of tact, and of intrepidity, he soon find that, even under such circumstances, it is possible to speak successfully." -

"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 o itself, it will suffice if we admit that it supplies the place of many talents." - William Gilmore Simms

"Tact is the great ability to see other people as they think you see them." - Carl Zuckmayer

"Private and public life are subject to the same rules – truth and manliness are two qualities that will carry you through this world much better than policy or tact or expediency or other words that were devised to conceal a deviation from a straight line." -

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

"Without tact you can learn nothing. Tact teaches you when to be silent. Inquirers who are always inquiring never learn anything." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield

"Without tact you can learn nothing. Tact teaches you when to be silent." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield

"Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come in relation with a person, the more necessary tact and courtesy become." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

"Few persons have tact enough to perceive when to be silent." - Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps

"Perseverance and tact are the two great qualities most valuable for all men who would mount, but especially for those who have to step out of the crowd." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield

"Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become." - Henry Ross Perot

"Good taste, tact, and propriety have more in common than men of letters affect to believe. Tact is good taste applied to bearing and conduct, and propriety is good taste applied to conversation." - Nicolas Chamfort,fully Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort, also spelled Nicholas

"In my experience tact is usually worse than the brutalities of truth" - Robertson Davies

"It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds." - Samuel Butler

"If it were not for the company of fools, a witty man would often be greatly at a loss." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt