tact

• Jesus would have good-naturedly managed ruffians

150:9.3Je­sus would have good-na­turedly man­aged the crowd and ef­fec­tively dis­armed even his vi­o­lent en­e­mies had it not been for the tac­ti­cal blun­der of one of his own apos­tles, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, who, with the help of Na­hor, one of the younger evan­ge­lists, had mean­while gath­ered to­gether a group of Je­sus’ friends from among the crowd and, as­sum­ing a bel­liger­ent at­ti­tude, had served no­tice on the en­e­mies of the Mas­ter to go hence. Je­sus had long taught the apos­tles that a soft an­swer turns away wrath, but his fol­low­ers were not ac­cus­tomed to see­ing their beloved teacher, whom they so will­ingly called Mas­ter, treated with such dis­cour­tesy and dis­dain. It was too much for them, and they found them­selves giv­ing ex­pres­sion to pas­sion­ate and ve­he­ment re­sent­ment, all of which only tended to arouse the mob spirit in this un­godly and un­couth as­sem­bly. And so, un­der the lead­er­ship of hire­lings, these ruf­fi­ans laid hold upon Je­sus and rushed him out of the syn­a­gogue to the brow of a near-by pre­cip­i­tous hill, where they were minded to shove him over the edge to his death be­low. But just as they were about to push him over the edge of the cliff, Je­sus turned sud­denly upon his cap­tors and, fac­ing them, qui­etly folded his arms. He said noth­ing, but his friends were more than as­ton­ished when, as he started to walk for­ward, the mob parted and per­mit­ted him to pass on un­mo­lested.

• fulcrum of social leverage

156:5.18As you grow older in years and more ex­pe­ri­enced in the af­fairs of the king­dom, are you be­com­ing more tact­ful in deal­ing with trou­ble­some mor­tals and more tol­er­ant in liv­ing with stub­born as­so­ciates? Tact is the ful­crum of so­cial lever­age, and tol­er­ance is the ear­mark of a great soul. If you pos­sess these rare and charm­ing gifts, as the days pass you will be­come more alert and ex­pert in your wor­thy ef­forts to avoid all un­nec­es­sary so­cial mis­un­der­stand­ings. Such wise souls are able to avoid much of the trou­ble which is cer­tain to be the por­tion of all who suf­fer from lack of emo­tional ad­just­ment, those who refuse to grow up, and those who refuse to grow old grace­fully.

• essential for success

160:1.9Even though you are ef­fec­tively armed to meet the dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions of life, you can hardly ex­pect suc­cess un­less you are equipped with that wis­dom of mind and charm of per­son­al­ity which en­able you to win the hearty sup­port and co-op­er­a­tion of your fel­lows. You can­not hope for a large mea­sure of suc­cess in ei­ther sec­u­lar or re­li­gious work un­less you can learn how to per­suade your fel­lows, to pre­vail with men. You sim­ply must have tact and tol­er­ance.

• gracefully gains victory

160:3.4My phi­los­o­phy tells me that there are times when I must fight, if need be, for the de­fense of my con­cept of righ­teous­ness, but I doubt not that the Mas­ter, with a more ma­ture type of per­son­al­ity, would eas­ily and grace­fully gain an equal vic­tory by his su­pe­rior and win­some tech­nique of tact and tol­er­ance. All too of­ten, when we bat­tle for the right, it turns out that both the vic­tor and the van­quished have sus­tained de­feat. I heard the Mas­ter say only yes­ter­day that the “wise man, when seek­ing en­trance through the locked door, would not de­stroy the door but rather would seek for the key where­with to un­lock it.” Too of­ten we en­gage in a fight merely to con­vince our­selves that we are not afraid.