#discretion — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

WIST Quotations @[email protected] · 2026-07-24 · 17:01 UTC

To go on with my advice (that is, supposing
You need advice from me): Be careful about
The things you say and the people to whom you say them.
Avoid the man who asks too many questions.
No question but he’ll be a teller of tales;
An ear that eager can’t keep a secret for long,
And once a word slips out it won’t come back.

[Protinus ut moneam (si quid monitoris eges tu)
quid de quoque viro et cui dicas, saepe videto,
percontatorem fugito: nam garrulus idem est,
nec retinent patulae commissa fideliter aures,
et semel emissum volat irrevocabile verbum.]

Horace (65–8 BC) Roman poet, satirist, soldier, politician [Quintus Horatius Flaccus]
Epistles [Epistularum, Letters], Book 1, ep. 18 “To Lollius,” l. 67ff (1.18.67-71) (20 BC) [tr. Ferry (2001)]

More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/horace/20802/

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WIST Quotations @[email protected] · 2026-02-07 · 00:14 UTC

A quotation from La Rochefoucauld

True eloquence consists in saying all that need be said and no more.

[La véritable éloquence consiste à dire tout ce qu’il faut, et à ne dire que ce qu’il faut.]

François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims], ¶250 (1665-1678) [tr. FitzGibbon (1957)]

More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/la-rochefoucauld-fra…

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WIST Quotations Has Moved! @[email protected] · 2025-10-20 · 19:55 UTC

A quotation from Henry Steele Commager

Censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion, incapable, that is, of doing an honest or intelligent job, and thus guarantees a steady intellectual decline.

Henry Steele Commager (1902-1998) American historian, writer, activist
Essay (1953-02-21), “Is Freedom Really Necessary?” Saturday Review

More info about this quote: wist.info/commager-henry-steel…

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