The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.

Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.

Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.

To put away one's own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.

Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.

The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard.

Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.

Honor wears different coats to different eyes.

For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in.

Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.

To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.

Books are humanity in print.

Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism.

The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.

More than a code of manners in war and love Chivalry was a moral system governing the whole of noble life.

Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place.

What is government but an arrangement by which the many accept the authority of the few

HONOR WEARS DIFFERENT COATS TO DIFFERENT EYES.

The better part of valor is to spend it learning to live with differences, however hostile, unless and until we can find another planet.

An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one's own prose.

Censorship always defeats it own purpose, for it creates in the end the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.

We schoolmasters must temper discretion with deceit.

Every man has a certain sphere of discretion which he has a right to expect shall not be infringed by his neighbours. This right flows from the very nature of man.

It is the custom of the Roman Church which I unworthily serve with the help of God, to tolerate some things, to turn a blind eye to some, following the spirit of discretion rather than the rigid letter of the law.

Discretion is the polite word for hypocrisy.

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.

Nothing is more dangerous than a friend without discretion; even a prudent enemy is preferable.

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.

Philosophy is nothing but discretion.

The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.

Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.

By placing discretion in the hands of an official to grant or deny a license, such a statute creates a threat of censorship that by its very existence chills free speech.

Discretion is nothing other than the sense of justice with respect to the sphere of the intimate contents of life.

Discretion is not the better part of biography.

Even private persons in due season, with discretion and temper, may reprove others, whom they observe to commit sin, or follow bad courses, out of charitable design, and with hope to reclaim them.

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

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.

Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life.

Notable talents are not necessarily connected with discretion.

Depart from discretion when it interferes with duty.

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

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.

The rest is a mere matter of detail, to be settled with judgment, discretion, and caution.

Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.

The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.

Judgment is not upon all occasions required, but discretion always is.