Quotes about Discretion

"In few people is discretion stronger than the desire to tell a good story."

The better part of valor is discretion.

Let's teach ourselves that honourable stop, Not to outsport discretion.

Be not too tame neither, but let your own Discretion be your tutor; suit the action to the word, the word to the action.

The future woman must have a life work and economic independence. She must have the right of motherhood at her own discretion.

The true gentleman is God's servant. The world's master and his own man. Virtue is his business, study his recreation. Contentment his rest and happiness his reward. God is his father, Jesus Christ his Savior, the Saints his brethren, and all that need him his friends. Devotion is his chaplain, chastity his chamberlain, sobriety his butler, temperance his work, hospitality his housekeeper, providence his steward, purity his mistress of the house, and discretion his porter, to be let in and out as most fit; thus is his whole family made up of virtue and he is the master of the house.

Once a python weighs more than half the weight of his keeper, the potential of dangerous constriction becomes very real; snakes of this size should not be handled alone. Once a python outweighs his keeper, fatal constriction is at the discretion of the python.

Common sense is, of all kinds, the most uncommon. It implies good judgment, sound discretion, and true and practical wisdom applied to common life.

I know of no safe repository for the ultimate powers of 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 increase their discretion by education.

Federal commandeering of state governments is such a novel phenomenon that this Court's first experience with it did not occur until the 1970's....later opinions of ours have made clear that the Federal Government may not compel the States to implement, by legislation or executive action, federal regulatory programs....Even assuming, moreover, that the Brady Act leaves no "policymaking" discretion with the States, we fail to see how that improves rather than worsens the intrusion upon state sovereignty. Preservation of the States as independent and autonomous political entities is arguably less undermined by requiring them to make policy in certain fields than (as Judge Sneed aptly described it over two decades ago) by "reducing them to puppets of a ventriloquist Congress."

Discretion is the better part of virtue, Commitments the voters don't know about can't hurt you.

Great ability without discretion comes almost invariably to a tragic end.

There are many shining qualities on the mind of man; but none so useful as discretion. It is this which gives a value to all the rest, and sets them at work in their proper places, and turns them to the advantage of their possessor. Without it, learning is pedantry; wit, impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; and the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice. Though a man has all other perfections and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life.

I hold it for indisputable, that the first duty of a State is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed, and educated, till it attain years of discretion. But in order to the effecting this the Government must have an authority over the people of which we now do not so much as dream.

To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.

Arms in the hands of citizens [may] be used at individual discretion . . . in private self-defense.

We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out discretion, and so disappears the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for ourselves and for others.

What is denominated discretion in man we call cunning in brutes.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

It is good discretion not make too much of any man at the first; because one cannot hold out that proportion.

The Art of Love: knowing how to combine the temperament of a vampire with the discretion of an anemone.

Great is our admiration of the orator who speaks with fluency and discretion.

A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake as by never repeating it.

FELON, n. A person of greater enterprise than discretion, who in embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate attachment.