74 Indiscretion Quotes
Following is our list of indiscretion quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about .
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Famous Indiscretion Quotes
Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion. — Oscar Wilde
An ounce of discretion is worth a pound of wit. — American Proverbs
Discretion is the polite word for hypocrisy. — Christine Keeler
Discretion is the better part of valour. — William Shakespeare
Carelessness is inexcusable, and merits the inevitable sequence. — James Anthony Froude
The first principle of solid wisdom is discretion, without it all the erudition of life is merely bagatelle. — Norm MacDonald
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. — Benjamin Franklin
Nothing is more dangerous than a friend without discretion; even a prudent enemy is preferable. — Jean De La Fontaine
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
Three of the gravest failings, want of sense, of courage, or of vigilance. — Thucydides
If you make a mistake and do not correct it, this is called a mistake. — Confucius
All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue. — Franz Kafka
Rashness belongs to youth; prudence to old age. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
A false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act. — James Thurber
A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding. — Bob Dylan
Short Indiscretion Quotes
- Pull the intestine out for the crow to eat. — Thai Proverbs
- A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. — Thomas Hardy
- All good art is an indiscretion. — Tennessee Williams
- Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people. — Saki [Hector Hugh Munro]
- 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
- If you must be indiscrete, be discrete in your indiscretion. — Mark Twain
- INDISCRETION, n. The guilt of woman. — Ambrose Bierce
- He is forever poised between a cliche and an indiscretion. — Harold MacMillan
Indiscreet Quotes
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
Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are. — Oscar Wilde
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
People Writing About Indiscretion
More Indiscretion Quotes
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
When he died, I went about like a ragged crow telling strangers, "My father died, my father died." My indiscretion embarrassed me, but I could not help it. Without my father on his Delhi rooftop, why was I here? Without him there, why should I go back? Without that ache between us, what was I made of? — Kiran Desai
Gone are the days when your indiscretions at university were recorded in a roneoed college newsletter of which there is only one copy left tucked in a filing cabinet at the back of a library. Today that same college newsletter is online, accessible by the whole world now and forever. — Malcolm Turnbull
Blind self-love, vanity, lifting aloft her empty head, and indiscretion, prodigal of secrets more transparent than glass, follow close behind. — Horace
A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms. — Thomas Hardy
If the title of a great man ought to be reserved for him who cannot be charged with an indiscretion or a vice, who spent his life in establishing the independence, the glory and durable prosperity of his country; who succeeded in all that he undertook, and whose successes were never won at the expense of justice, integrity, or by the sacrifice of a single principle--this title will not be denied to Washington. — Jared Sparks
A Foreign Secretaryand this applies also to a prospective Foreign Secretaryis always faced with this cruel dilemma. Nothing he can say can do very much good, and almost anything he may say may do a great deal of harm. Anything he says that is not obvious is dangerous; whatever is not trite is risky. He is forever poised between the cliche and the indiscretion. — Harold MacMillan
I had been playing with matches and burned a small rug. I was in the process of covering up my crime when suddenly God saw me. I felt His gaze inside my head and on my hands....I flew into a rage against so crude an indiscretion, I blasphemed....He never looked at me again....I had the more difficulty getting rid of Him the Holy Ghost in that He had installed Himself at the back of my head....I collared the Holy Ghost in the cellar and threw Him out. — Jean-Paul Sartre
Scandal is merely the compassionate allowance which the gay make to the humdrum. Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people. — Hector Hugh Munro
By the time I was 10 or 11, I was completely demoralized. I thought, "I'm done. I'm never going to be a missionary," because my indiscretion column, whether it was little lies or stealing a Chunky bar, kept me from sainthood. — Patti Smith
There are two indiscretions that generally distinguish fools: a readiness to report whatever they hear, and a practice of communicating with secrecy what is commonly understood. — Norm MacDonald
Born originals, how comes it to pass that we die copies? That meddling ape imitation, as soon as we come to years of indiscretion, (so let me speak,) snatches the pen, and blots out nature's mark of separation, cancels her kind intention, destroys all mental individuality. The lettered world no longer consists of singulars: it is a medley, a mass; and a hundred books, at bottom, are but one. — Edward Young
Wine has been to me a firm friend and a wise counsellor. Wine has lit up for me the pages of literature, and revealed in life romance lurking in the commonplace. Wine has made me bold, but not foolish; has induced me to say silly things, but not do them. If such small indiscretions standing in the debit column of wine's account were added up, they would amount to nothing in comparison with the vast accumulation on the credit side. — Duff Cooper
Rashly, And praised be rashness for it--let us know, Our indiscretion sometime serves us well When our deep plots do pall, and that should learn us There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will — William Shakespeare
The German huts, open on every side to the eye of indiscretion or jealousy, were a better safeguard of conjugal fidelity than the walls, the bolts, and the eunuchs of a persian harem. To this reason, another may be added of a more honourable nature. The Germans treated their women with esteem and confidence, consulted them on every occasion of importance, and fondly believed that in their breasts resided a sanctity and wisdom more than human. — Edward Gibbon
Dan Moldea, the lead investigator for Larry Flynt's ongoing quest to uncover sexual indiscretions of Republican congressional members, has now admitted he was hired by the law firm defending President Clinton. — Jerry Falwell
Indiscretion has always seemed to me to be one of the privileges of tact. — Natalie Clifford Barney
All expression, all art, is an indiscretion we commit against ourselves. This is not an 'impoverishment' but an increase in wealth, for it is in this way that we make the short hours of our lives live on beyond themselves. — Natalie Clifford Barney
Indiscretion and wickedness, be it known, are first cousins. — Ninon De L'Enclos
A Minister can always give a reason; and, if he be clever, he can generally when doing so punish the man who asks for it. The punishing of an influential enemy is an indiscretion; but an obscure questioner may often be crushed with good effect. — Anthony Trollope
Women in love sooner forgive great indiscretions than small infidelities. — Francois de la Rochefoucauld
TALK, v.t. To commit an indiscretion without temptation, from an impulse without purpose. — Ambrose Bierce
Holiness is the sum of a million little things — the avoidance of little evils and little foibles, the setting aside of little bits of worldliness and little acts of compromise, the putting to death of little inconsistencies and little indiscretions, the attention to little duties and little dealings, the hard work of little self-denials and little self-restraints, the cultivation of little benevolences and little forbearances. — Kevin DeYoung
Elderly people and those in authority cannot always be relied upon to take enlightened and comprehending views of what they call the indiscretions of youth. — Winston Churchill
One nation is to another what one individual is to another; with this melancholy distinction perhaps, that the former with fewer of the benevolent emotions than the latter, are under fewer restraints also from taking undue advantage of the indiscretions of each other. — James Madison
While you are alone you are entirely your own master and if you have one companion you are but half your own, and the less so in proportion to the indiscretion of his behavior. — Leonardo da Vinci
How is Angeline?” asked Dimitri. “Is she improving?” Eddie and I exchanged glances. So much for avoiding her indiscretions. “Improving how exactly?” I asked. “In combat, in following the dress code, or in keeping her hands to herself?” “Or in turning off caps-lock?” added Eddie. “You noticed that too?” I asked. “Hard not to,” he said. — Richelle Mead
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