We must never expect discretion in first love: it is accompanied by such excessive joy that unless the joy is allowed to overflow, it will choke you. — Alexandre Dumas
I have tales to tell, but I don't tell them. Discretion. Discretion. — Gregory Peck
Confiding a secret to an unworthy person is like carrying grain in a bag with a hole. — African Proverbs
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
To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly. — Samuel Johnson
The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men. — Samuel Adams
It is better to remain silent than to speak the truth ill-humoredly, and spoil an excellent dish by covering it with bad sauce. — Saint Francis de Sales
If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness. — Alexander Smith
He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore. — Sigmund Freud
Short Indiscreet Quotes
Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are. — Oscar Wilde
It requires two indiscreet persons to institute a quarrel; one individual cannot quarrel alone. — Aime Martin
Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet. — John Donne
More trouble is caused in this world by indiscreet answers than by indiscreet questions. — Sydney J. Harris
There are questions so indiscreet, that they deserve neither truth nor falsehood in reply. — Sophie Swetchine
Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people. — Saki [Hector Hugh Munro]
No excuses ever, for anyone; that is my principle at the outset. I deny the good intention, the respectable mistake, the indiscretion, the extenuating circumstance. With me there is no giving of absolution or blessing. — Albert Camus
Early in life she had discovered the important truth that nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion; and by a series of reckless escapades, half of them quite harmless, she had acquired all the privileges of a personality. — Oscar Wilde
Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people. — Hector Hugh Munro
Man's chief moral deficiency appears to be not his indiscretions but his reticence. — Hannah Arendt
Indiscretion, rashness, falsehood, levity, and malice, produce each other. — Johann Kaspar Lavater
Discreet Quotes
Satire has been a sanctuary historically monopolized by progressives, originally used as a discreet tool against Western religious fundamentalism. — Maajid Nawaz
We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country .... expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly. — Theodor Herzl
Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet To run amuck, and tilt at all I meet. — Alexander Pope
We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. — Mark Twain
Death must simply become the discreet but dignified exit of a peaceful person from a helpful society that is not torn, not even overly upset by the idea of a biological transition without significance, without pain or suffering, and ultimately without fear. — Philippe Aries
Robin is a handsome ephebic boy, usually shown in his uniform with bare legs. He is buoyant with energy and devoted to nothing on earth or in interplanetary space as much as to Bruce Wayne. He often stands with his legs spread, the genital region discreetly evident. — Fredric Wertham
Future's the only flower worth tending in this earth, where I sow my words daily: and you know, these good trees bear fruit round the year, discreetly, moving along the waterways and four seasons of the faithful sun. — Alamgir Hashmi
At times discreetly, at times disgustingly, I yielded to the most fatal temptation whenever I could no longer bear it: as a result of impatience, Orpheus lost Eurydice; as a result of impatience, I lost myself. — Jean-Paul Sartre
Be prudent, diligent, temperate and discreet. Remember that every human being has a claim upon your kind offices. — Albert Pike
Oh, if I could put some of my reckless spirit into these discreet cautious lazy men! — Mary Boykin Chesnut
I've been accused of being cold, snobbish, distant. Those who know me well know that I’m nothing of the sort. If anything, the opposite is true. But is it too much to ask to want to protect your private life, your inner feelings? Lots of things touch me and I don’t want to be indiscreet. — Grace Kelly
The function of a briefing paper is to prevent the ambassador from saying something dreadfully indiscreet. I sometimes think its true object is to prevent the ambassador from saying anything at all. — Kingman Brewster, Jr.
Human nature is, by definition, a talkative one, imprudent, indiscreet, gossipy, incapable of closing its mouth and keeping it closed. — Jose Saramago
Be advised what thou dost discourse of, and what thou maintainest whether touching religion, state, or vanity; for if thou err in the first, thou shalt be accounted profane; if in the second, dangerous; if in the third, indiscreet and foolish. — Sir Walter Raleigh
Consolation indiscreetly pressed upon us, when we are suffering undue affliction, only serves to increase our pain, and to render our grief more poignant. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Indeed, I was so afraid to dishonour my friends and family by my indiscreet actions, that I rather chose to be accounted a fool, than to be thought rude or wanton. — Margaret Cavendish
Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in proportion as it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the object of its indiscreet choice. — Percy Bysshe Shelley
All enterprises that are entered into with indiscreet zeal may be pursued with great vigor at first, but are sure to collapse in the end. — Tacitus
She’s got an indiscreet voice,” I remarked. “It’s full of-“ I hesitated. “Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly. That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money-that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it. — F. Scott Fitzgerald
We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents. — Mark Twain
a lot of trouble has been caused by memoirs. Indiscreet revelations, that sort of thing. People who have been close as an oyster all their lives seem positively to relish causing trouble when they themselves shall be comfortably dead. — Agatha Christie
Nothing is more false and more indiscreet than always to want to choose what mortifies us in everything. By this rule a person would soon ruin his health, his business, his reputation, his relations with his relatives and friends, in fact every good work which Providence gives him. — Francois FeNelon
One must believe neither the people of the palace, who ordinarily measure the power of the king by the shape of his crown, which, being round, has no end, nor those who, in the excesses of an indiscreet zeal, proclaim themselves openly as partisans of Rome. — Cardinal Richelieu
Spirit is now a very fashionable word: to act with Spirit, to speak with Spirit, means only to act rashly, and to talk indiscreetly. An able man shows his Spirit by gentle words and resolute actions; he is neither hot nor timid. — Lord Chesterfield
You must labour to acquire that great and uncommon talent of hating with good breeding, and loving with prudence; to make no quarrel irreconcilable by silly and unnecessary indications of anger; and no friendship dangerous, in care it breaks, by a wanton, indiscreet, and unreserved confidence. — Lord Chesterfield
If my intentions were not to be read in my eyes and voice, I should not have survived so long without quarrels and without harm, seeing the indiscreet freedom with which I say, right or wrong, whatever comes into my head. — Michel de Montaigne
The indiscreet questioner - and by indiscreet questions I mean questions which it is not conceivably a man's duty either to the community or to any individual to answer - is a marauder, and there is every excuse for treating him as such. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould
An indiscreet man is more hurtful than an ill-natured one; for as the latter will only attack his enemies, and those he wishes ill to, the other injures indifferently both friends and foes. — Joseph Addison
The literary man? An indiscreet man, who devaluates his miseries, divulges them, tells them like so many beads: immodesty-the sideshow of second thoughts-is his rule; he offers himself. — Emile M. Cioran
Our body is a well-set clock, which keeps good time, but if it be too much or indiscreetly tampered with, the alarm runs out before the hour. — Sayings
A prudent silence will frequently be taken for wisdom and a sentence or two cautiously thrown in will sometimes gain the palm of knowledge, while a man well informed but indiscreet and unreserved will not uncommonly talk himself out of all consideration and weight. (Alexander Hamilton's 'thesis on discretion' written to his son James shortly before his fatal duel with Burr.) — Ron Chernow
Be advised what thou dost discourse of, and what thou maintainest whether touching religion, state, or vanity; for if thou err in the first, thou shalt be accounted profane; if in the second, dangerous; if in the third, indiscreet and foolish. — Walter Raleigh
In Conclusion
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