75 Tactful Quotes

Following is our list of tactful quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about how to be tactful in life.

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Short Tactful Quotes

  • Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy. — Howard W. Newton
  • Tact is after all a kind of mind reading. — Sarah Orne Jewett
  • The true gentleman is subtly poised between an inner tact and an outer defense. — Puzant Kevork Thomajan
  • So be sure when you step, Step with care and great tact. — Dr. Seuss
  • Tact is the art of convincing people that they know more than you do. — Raymond Mortimer
  • Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy. — Warren W. Wiersbe
  • Tact is rubbing out another's mistakes, not rubbing them in. — Marvin J. Ashton
  • Tact is the ability to make a person see lightning without letting him feel the bolt. — Orlando Aloysius Battista
  • I have tales to tell, but I don't tell them. Discretion. Discretion. — Gregory Peck
  • What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact. — Donald E. Williams, Jr.
Tactful quote Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forwad for the trip.
Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forwad for the trip.

Being Tactful Quotes

Nobody wants to know a colored woman's opinion about her own status of that of her group. When she dares express it, no matter how mild or tactful it may be, it is called 'propaganda,' or is labeled 'controversial.' Those two words have come to have a very ominous sound to me. — Mary Church Terrell

A horse will never tire of a rider who possesses both tact and sensitivity because he will never be pushed beyond his possibilities. — Nuno Oliveira

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

To act honestly- even at the risk of saying the unpleasant truth, or of saying no and causing distress to others- if done with intelligence and tact, is the kindest thing to do because it respects our own integrity and acknowledges in others the capacity to be competent and mature. — Piero Ferrucci

So be sure when you step, Step with care and great tact. And remember that life's A Great Balancing Act. And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed) Kid, you'll move mountains. — Dr. Seuss

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

The offender needs pity, not wrath; those who must needs be corrected, should be treated with tact and gentleness; and one must be always ready to learn better. 'The best kind of revenge is, not to become like unto them.' — Marcus Aurelius

If it requires great tact to speak to the purpose, it requires no less to know when to be silent. — Francois de la Rochefoucauld

People's shortcomings should be treated with tact; if you expose them crudely, this is attacking weakness with a weakness. When people are stubborn, it requires skill to influence them; if you treat them with anger and spite, this is treating stubbornness with stubbornness. — Zicheng Hong

Opinion! If every one had so little tact as to give their true opinion when it was asked this would be a miserable world. — Edna Ferber

Tact Quotes

... some people cannot bear the truth, no matter how tactfully it is told. No doubt the haughty, the tyrannical, the unmerciful, the impure and the fomentors of discord take a fierce exception to the Sermon on the Mount. — Mary Church Terrell

Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings. — David Sedaris

There are very many characteristics which go into making a model civil servant. Prominent among them are probity, industry, good sense, good habits, good temper, patience, order, courtesy, tact, self-reliance, many deference to superior officers, and many consideration for inferiors. — Chester A. Arthur

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

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

For whoever habitually suppresses the truth in the interests of tact will produce a deformity from the womb of his thought. — B. H. Liddell Hart

What children, in fact all of us at any age, find frightening is unreliability and emotional coldness. The idea that you can't affect someone, that you can't see where they're coming from and can change tact at any moment. — Tilda Swinton

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

The chief misery of the decline of the faculties, and a main cause of the irritability that often goes with it, is evidently the isolation, the lack of customary appreciation and influence, which only the rarest tact and thoughtfulness on the part of others can alleviate. — Charles Horton Cooley

Lookin back on it at least my pride is in tact cause we said no strings attached and I still got tied up in that — Drake

People Writing About Tactful

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Sarah Orne Jewett

Sarah Orne Jewett
quotes on religion, education and life

53 202
Read quotes by Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss
quotes on gratitude, reading and love

286 9754
Read quotes by Warren W. Wiersbe

Warren W. Wiersbe
quotes on leadership, faith and prayer

89 1622
Read quotes by Marvin J. Ashton

Marvin J. Ashton
quotes on charity

102 603
Read quotes by Orlando Aloysius Battista

Orlando Aloysius Battista
quotes on life, love

25 309
Read quotes by Gregory Peck

Gregory Peck
quotes on life, education and love

26 611

More Tactful Quotes

I always felt that a scientist owes the world only one thing, and that is the truth as he sees it. If the truth contradicts deeply held beliefs, that is too bad. Tact and diplomacy are fine in international relations, in politics, perhaps even in business; in science only one thing matters, and that is the facts. — Hans Eysenck

... the majority of colored men do not yet think it worth while that women aspire to higher education.... The three R's, a littlemusic and a good deal of dancing, a first rate dress-maker and a bottle of magnolia balm, are quite enough generally to render charming any woman possessed of tact and the capacity for worshipping masculinity. — Anna Julia Cooper

It is tact that is golden, not silence. — Samuel Butler

Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

Tact is the ability to step on a man's toes without messing up the shine on his shoes. — Harry S. Truman

Tact is good taste in action. — Diane de Poitiers

You'll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You'll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go. So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact and remember that Life's a Great Balancing Act. Just never forget to be dexterous and deft. And never mix up your right foot with your left. — Dr. Seuss

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

Any man with money to make the purchase may become a dog's owner. But no man --spend he ever so much coin and food and tact in the effort-- may become a dog's Master without consent of the dog. Do you get the difference? And he whom a dog once unreservedly accepts as Master is forever that dog's God. — Albert Payson Terhune

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

Intelligent and alert, wistful but enthusiastic, frank yet tactful, assured without conceit and tender without sentimentality. — Cecil Beaton

Tact is the unsaid part of what you think. — Henry Van Dyke

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 of expediency or other words that were devised to conceal a deviation from a straight line. — Robert E. Lee

Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far. — Jean Cocteau

If a diplomat says yes, he means perhaps. If he says perhaps he means no. And if he says no, he's the hell of a diplomat. — Agnes Sligh Turnbull

In Conclusion

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