Top 100 Quotes About Discretion
#3. Great ability without discretion comes almost invariably to a tragic end
Leon Gambetta
#4. He looked around circumspectly, then introduced himself: Professor Camestres. At the question "Professor of what?" he made a vague gesture, as if urging us to exercise greater discretion.
Umberto Eco
#5. No one talks about it. No one talks about them at all. "The Ancients prefer discretion," Mom once told me. But some say it's because they're so freakish we'd drop dead of fright. Others say they're too attractive, too tempting. I prefer this theory.
Melissa West
#6. Good librarians are natural intelligence operatives. They possess all of the skills and characteristics required for that work: curiosity, wide-ranging knowledge, good memories, organization and analytical aptitude, and discretion.
Marilyn Johnson
#8. Impersonators, with time give up hope, but great leaders imitate with discretion.
S. E. Entsua-Mensah
#10. As a ring of gold in a swine's snout, so is a beautiful woman who lacks discretion. - PROVERBS 11:22
Rachel Held Evans
#11. We schoolmasters must temper discretion with deceit.
Evelyn Waugh
#12. (Quoting Goethe
We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for ourselves and for others.
James Howe
#13. That's the whole point of ... of prosecutorial discretion in the judicial system. It's finding a just outcome in an individual case.
Andrew Thomas
#14. Catherine usually sat by me, but to- day she stole nearer to Hareton; and I presently saw she would have no more discretion in her friendship than she had in her hostility.
Emily Bronte
#15. month - the money gives the women at least a small degree of discretion in spending and the prestige that comes from contributing to the family budget.
Geraldine Brooks
#16. The crew of Apollo 8, who at Christmas, 1968, became the first men ever to set eyes upon the Lunar Farside, told me that they had been tempted to radio back the discovery of a large black monolith: alas, discretion prevailed.
Arthur C. Clarke
#17. The first duty of a state is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed and educated till it attains years of discretion.
John Ruskin
#18. Lord Jesu, I ask Thee, give unto me movement in Thy love without measure; desire without limit; longing without order; burning without discretion. Truly the better the love of Thee is, the greedier it is; for neither by reason is it restrained, nor by dread thronged, nor by doom tempted.
Richard Rolle
#19. Most high courts in other nations do not have discretion, such as we enjoy, in selecting the cases that the high court reviews. Our court is virtually alone in the amount of discretion it has.
Sandra Day O'Connor
#20. They make their fortune who are stout and wise,
Wit rules the heavens, discretion guides the skies.
[Lat., Che sovente addivien che'l saggio e'l forte.
Fabro a se stesso e di beata sorte.]
Torquato Tasso
#21. Discretion did not always accompany years, nor was youth always without it.
Benjamin Franklin
#22. Dictionary Definition of Delicacy 1. The quality or condition of being delicate, fragile, or sensitive. 2. Discretion, tact.
David Foenkinos
#24. I've done routes where I've climbed 200 feet off the ground and just been, like, 'What am I doing?' I then just climbed back down and went home. Discretion is the better part of valor. Some days are just not your day. That's the big thing with free soloing: when to call it.
Alex Honnold
#25. Silence, maiden; thy tongue outruns thy discretion.
Walter Scott
#26. Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life.
Walter Scott
#27. 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
#28. Without discretion, people may be overlaid with unreasonable affection, and choked with too much nourishment.
Jeremy Collier
#29. I do ride contend against the advantages of distrust. In the world we live in, it is but too necessary. Some of old called it the very sinews of discretion.
Edmund Burke
#30. I was often, later on, to act out with Giaconda a circumspection I did not feel: her abundance made others reticent; her openness evoked discretion.
Shirley Hazzard
#31. Where does discretion end, and avarice begin?
Jane Austen
#32. 10. When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul; 11. Discretion shall preserve thee,
Anonymous
#34. There's a sort of decency among the dead, a remarkable discretion: you never find them making any complaint against the doctor who killed them!
Moliere
#35. I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.
Thomas Jefferson
#36. Those of us who have come to years of discretion and more, must often take to retrospect, and seek to appraise the outcome of our lives.
Learned Hand
#37. Knowledge is the treasure of the mind, but discretion is the key to it, without which it is useless. The practical part of wisdom is the best.
Owen Feltham
#38. With the enormous and steady increase in the volume of our literature, we must rely more and more upon sympathetic selection, judicious editing, and the indexer who knows where to exercise discretion. Any simpleton can write a book, but it requires high skill to make an index.
Rossiter Johnson
#39. Managerial discretion can take many forms, some very subtle. Individual managers may run slack operations; they may pursue subgoals that are at variance with corporate purposes; they can engage in self-dealing.
Oliver E. Williamson
#40. Football has end zones and goal posts; basketball has the hoop, and hockey the goal cage. Baseball is the only game with an imaginary box: the strike zone, which the umpire determines at his own discretion.
Richard Corliss
#41. The first principle of solid wisdom is discretion, without it all the erudition of life is merely bagatelle.
Norm MacDonald
#42. If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one ...
James Madison
#43. Precision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of files, continuity, discretion, unity, strict subordination, reduction of friction and of material and personal costs - these are raised to the optimum point in the strictly bureaucratic administration.
Max Weber
#44. Drink without getting drunk
Love without suffering jealousy
Eat without overindulging
Never argue
And once in a while, with great discretion, misbehave
Dan Buettner
#45. Sometimes when I'm told to use my own discretion, if no one is looking I'll use someone else's. But I always put it back.
George Carlin
#46. Well. I am not afraid. But to protect you, Katerina, I will be discreet. Plain Kate considered a cat's idea of discretion, and was frightened.
Erin Bow
#47. Life is a great gift, and as we reach years of discretion, most of us naturally ask ourselves what should be the main object of our existence.
John Lubbock
#48. There are divers men who make a great show of loyalty, and pretend to such discretion in the hidden things they hear, that at the end folk come to put faith in them.
Marie De France
#50. Scenes are now to take place as will open the eyes of credulity and of insanity itself, to the dangers of a paper medium abandoned to the discretion of avarice and of swindlers.
Thomas Jefferson
#51. I wish to give officials greater discretion. The State's authority will be increased thereby. I wish to transform the non-political criminal police into a political instrument of the highest State authority.
Adolf Hitler
#52. The proper use of language, for me personally, is one that enables us to approach things (present or absent) with discretion, attention, and caution, with respect for what things (present or absent) communicate without words.
Italo Calvino
#53. Discretion is the survival one needs around friends who admires you but hate your hapiness and success, and would do anything so that you are not up to them or better than them.
Darmie Orem
#54. Silence, as someone has said, is the mother of prayer and the nurse of holy thoughts. Silence cuts down on our sins, doesn't it? We can't be sinning in so many different ways if we are being quiet before God. Silence nourishes patience, charity, discretion.
Elisabeth Elliot
#55. I've always stressed the value of autonomy for intellectual and moral development. Autonomy provides us with a sphere of discretion which we all require.
Brian D'Ambrosio
#56. Have you not observed that there is a lower kind of discretion and regularity, which seldom fails of raising men to the highest station in the court, the church, and the law?
Jonathan Swift
#57. Every cure of obesity must begin with these three essential precepts:discretion in eating, moderation in sleeping, and exercise ...
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#58. Abortion is a moral right - which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved.
Ayn Rand
#59. I have tales to tell, but I don't tell them. Discretion. Discretion.
Gregory Peck
#60. I don't understand why people expect tips. In hotels you order food in your room, and it's already more expensive from the room service menu, so it's a cheek to expect a tip on top. I do sometimes reward good service, but it should be at my discretion, and I'm not going to be held to ransom.
Bernard Hill
#62. Throughout the 1970s, '80s and '90s, federal mandatory minimum laws were implemented that forced judges to deliver sentences far lengthier than they would have if allowed to use their own discretion. The result has been decades of damage, particularly to young people.
Rand Paul
#63. Swift calls discretion low prudence; it is high prudence, and one of the most important elements entering into either social or political life.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin
#65. I don't know what's hipper: to Facebook or to Twitter. I just know for me, personally, discretion never went out of style.
John Ridley
#66. Whatever defamation of character my enemies are spreading about me, I do not feel the need to justify myself toward them. While discretion obliges me to remain silent, my duty compels me to prevent them from doing any more harm.
Toussaint Louverture
#67. Universities are filled with poets and novelists conducting demure and careful lives in imitation of Eliot and Forster and those others who (through what seems to be have been discretion) made it.
Gore Vidal
#68. I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you - it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.
Philip Roth
#69. Mutual respect implies discretion and reserve even in love itself; it means preserving as much liberty as possible to those whose life we share. We must distrust our instinct of intervention, for the desire to make one's own will prevail is often disguised under the mask of solicitude.
Henri Frederic Amiel
#70. A person of greater enterprise than discretion, who in embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate attachment.
Ambrose Bierce
#71. The rest is a mere matter of detail, to be settled with judgment, discretion, and caution.
John Griffin Carlisle
#72. Understand that wisdom is higher than intellect and discretion is higher than debating.
Nirmala Srivastava
#73. What a world of trouble those who never marry escape! There are many happy matches, it is true, and sometimes "my dear," and "my love" come from the heart; but what sensible bachelor, rejoicing in his freedom and years of discretion, will run the tremendous risk?
Mark Twain
#74. M + D = C, Monopoly plus Discretion equals Corruption
Edward Luce
#75. I heard that "discretion is the better part of valor" from someone. Dunno exactly what that means but if it means not gettin' my fool haed blowed off then I'm all for it. -- Merle Johnson (Chicago Chase)
R.L. Kiser
#76. Conversing with children is a fine art ... An art form that demands large amounts of both honesty and misdirection. Or maybe discretion is a better word.
Miriam Toews
#77. The discretion of the watcher versus the privacy of the watched was just another arms race; this one, I could see, would run and run.
Ken MacLeod
#78. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.
Rudy Giuliani
#79. I don't show every picture that I have, I think discretion is also important.
Mick Rock
#80. The future woman must have a life work and economic independence. She must have the right of motherhood at her own discretion.
W.E.B. Du Bois
#81. Love is the tyrant of the heart; it darkens
Reason, confounds discretion; deaf to Counsel
It runs a headlong course to desperate madness.
John Ford
#82. Most of our trainers said it was up to our discretion, and that we never had to use sex unless we felt it was necessary. Wink, wink. They also said that we should do whatever it takes to get the job done.
Charlie Evans
#83. Ash's jaw flexed at the mention of Bjorn. "Forgiveness is the better part of valor."
"I always thought it was 'discretion.'"
Ash shook his head. "Discretion is easy. It's finding the courage to forgive yourself and others that is hard.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#84. Equality before the law in a true democracy is a matter of right. It cannot be a matter of charity or of favor or of grace or of discretion.
Wiley Blount Rutledge
#85. Neither coquetry nor love is imbued with discretion.
Sophie Arnould
#86. Parental Discretion is advised, but will be completely f*n, ignored
Triple H
#87. Use Discretion: It is proper netiquette to use discretion, best behavior, in all online activity.
David Chiles
#88. She lives at my discretion. I can take her breath. I can give it back.
Karen Marie Moning
#89. Discretion is a polite word for hypocrisy.
Tea Party Teddy
Dianne Harman
#90. The only greater [evil] than separation ... [is] living under a government of discretion.
Thomas Jefferson
#91. Discretion, like the hole in a doughnut, does not exist except as an area left open by a surrounding belt of restriction. It is therefore a relative concept. It always makes sense to ask, "Discretion under which standards?" or "Discretion as to which authority?
Ronald Dworkin
#92. Zaphod did not want to tangle with them and, deciding that just as discretion is the better part of valor, so was cowardice is the better part of discretion, he valiantly hid himself in a closet.
Douglas Adams
#93. She had the experience to suffer with discretion.
John Le Carre
#94. We must never look for discretion in first love. First love is accompanied by such excessive joy that unless the joy be allowed to overflow, it will stifle you.
Alexandre Dumas
#97. Judgment is not upon all occasions required, but discretion always is.
Lord Chesterfield
#98. Strive to make proposed solutions as self-executing as possible. As the degree of discretion increases, so too does bureaucracy, delay, and expense.
Donald Rumsfeld
#99. Do you come to a philosopher as to a cunning man, to learn something by magic or witchcraft, beyond what can be known by common prudence and discretion?
David Hume
#100. If there's one thing I don't look for in a maid, it's discretion. Except with my own secrets, of course.
Julian Fellowes
