Jealously guarding its reputation for discretion and impartiality, it manages to work with the least tractable governments.But not Myanmar's.
But, Palestinian politicians say, it has also done a better job of staying close to the people and guarding a reputation for incorruptibility.
Machiavelli asserts that Borgia had thus proved more genuinely merciful than the Florentines, who, guarding their reputation, had allowed the town of Pistoia to be destroyed by factional fighting rather than intervene with their own arms.
It should be guarding that reputation proudly, not scurrying to salvage the careers of rapists and assorted sexual incontinents, past and present, who don't seem to understand that taking advantage of drunk, overawed girls, as their shithead mates film it on camera phones, isn't what Pele had in mind when he spoke of the beautiful game.
Monitor what's being said about you, care for the consumers who are engaged in your brand, return phone calls, let no stone go unturned when it comes to guarding your reputation.
"Reason is not fit to rule; it was designed to seek justification, not truth," where justification means pursuing "socially strategic goals, such as guarding our reputations and convincing other people to support us".
At an age when some writers would be decorously guarding their reputations, he is still writing as he did in his youth, with so many mad fancies filling his mind that he can't always succeed in assembling them into cogent dramatic form.
That seems all the more reason for it to guard its reputation carefully.
"We are an independent organisation and we guard our reputation fiercely.
Berenson guarded his reputation as a scholar, and did not relish a position as Duveen's in-house authenticator.
In a response to the committee (pdf) on Monday, Ofsted said it fiercely guarded its reputation to act "without fear or favour" when inspecting schools.
