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More "Discernment" Quotes from Famous Books



... knew,—so she declared to herself,—that the old man's words had not been vague. And as to those hang-dog looks,—her lover had told her that she should not allow a man's countenance to go so far in evidence as that! In so judging she would trust much too far to her own power of discernment. She would not contradict him, but she felt sure of her discernment in that respect. She did not in the least doubt the truth of the evidence conveyed by the ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... feather again! For, look you, the Emperor (who, for that matter, was a wit) soon sent for the inhabitant, and told him that he had come there to deliver him. Whereupon the civilian finds us free quarters and makes much of us, so do the women, who showed great discernment. To come to a final end; in Ventose '96, which was at that time what the month of March is now, we had been driven up into a corner of the Pays des Marmottes; but after the campaign, lo and behold! we were the masters of Italy, just as Napoleon had prophesied. And in ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... discernment in you?" Her tones had the softness of a coquetry about to lose itself in a glad submission to a power ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various

... the church, is put into office of the most different description. It looks as if the first object were to neutralise his mischievous tendencies. But I am in doubt whether to entertain this supposition would be really a compliment to the discernment of my superiors, or a breach of charity; therefore it ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... the spirit of Truth guide you, it will bless you with keener discernment, and clearer understanding, than has been possible for you heretofore. It is when you look for the spirit of religion that you find it and understand it, and the fact that so much has been said against our Bible as a book, ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... be served by those who are able to make themselves useful to him, without exacting from them solidity either of character or of attainments. With him the Servant of Society, with an instinct that does credit to his discernment, will have established friendly relations. The politician was first amused and then impressed by his versatility; now, having the opportunity, he offers to him the position of Assistant Private Secretary (unpaid), and it is scarcely necessary to say that the young man accepts it with a gratitude ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various

... at first it was only an oppressive notion of there being some significance that really mattered in this man's story. That mattered to her. For the first time the shadow of danger and death crossed her mind. Was that the significance? Suddenly, in a flash of acute discernment, she saw herself involved helplessly in that story, as one is involved in ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... the manse the next day and cross-questioned Mary, who, being a young person of considerable discernment and astuteness, told her story simple and truthfully, with an entire absence of complaint or bravado. Miss Cornelia was more favourably impressed than she had expected to be, but deemed it ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... out-balanced by the unendurable thought that his commonplace efforts had not been sufficient to save her from the two evilly-disposed individuals who are, as he perceives, at this moment, neglecting no means within their power to accomplish his destruction." Accepting the discernment of these words, the maiden fled, first bestowing a look upon Ling which clearly indicated an honourable regard for himself, a high-minded desire that the affair might end profitably on his account, and an amiable hope that they should meet again, when these subjects could ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... this affair was of a character frequent in the naval annals of that day. Elliott's quick discernment of the opportunity to reverse the naval conditions which constituted so much of the British advantage, and the promptness of his action, are qualities more noticeable than the mere courage displayed. ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... joined by an official of the secret service, who has a host of singular questions to ask about Hollins. Some of them have a tendency to make the young major wonder if he really has been the possessor of eyes and ears, or powers of discernment, during the past winter. Then come some inquiries about Rix. Abbot is forced to confess that he knows nothing of his antecedents, and that he was made quartermaster-sergeant at Hollins's request, ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King

... approached what the owl-like discernment of Caesar pronounced to be a small farmhouse with a few out-buildings. But it was no easy matter to arouse the drowsy countrymen, and a still more difficult task to convince the good man of the house that his nocturnal visitors were not brigands. At last it was explained ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... dog-faced baboon, or any other monster which has sensation, is a measure of all things; then while we were reverencing him as a god he might have produced a magnificent effect by expounding to us that he was no wiser than a tadpole. For if truth is only sensation, and one man's discernment is as good as another's, and every man is his own judge, and everything that he judges is right and true, then {90} what need of Protagoras to be our instructor at a high figure; and why should we be less knowing than he is, or have to go to him, if every ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall

... the similar instances within the range of memory or legend, and this achievement was pronounced the greatest. They were proud of him, and of the exploit, and of themselves that they had him. Morey, who had taken him because he could find no other, blazed up into a man of fine discernment; and Jo nearly killed him with approving slaps on his feeble back. Indeed, his apologies for what he had said were ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... cannot—dare not—seek to know What finite vision, to the end, Through years of strictest search below, Must ever fail to comprehend! God! whose intents so far transcend Our poor discernment, let me see Some portion of the truths that tend By ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster

... therefore, that you have no right to exult if you toss and gore me, for I tell you beforehand that you will. And, if you do, that only proves me to be in the right, and a very sagacious person; since my argument has all the appearance of being irresistible, and yet such is my discernment that I foresee most acutely that it will turn out a most absurd one. It is this: your answer to Philebus issues in this—that a thing A is shown to be at once more valuable and yet not more valuable than the same thing B. Now, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... and celebrated city after many years' absence. The pleasure derived from the hope of enjoyment, the self-satisfaction flowing from the presumption of our profound knowledge of the place, and the feeling of mental superiority attached to our discernment in returning to the spot, which, at the moment, appears to us the particular region of the earth peculiarly worthy of a second visit—or a third, as the case may be—all combine to stuff the lining of the diligence, the packsaddle of the Turkish post-horse, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... morning, a Napoleon who dictates half the night in his bath, and who works eighteen hours a day, would scarcely suffice for its needs. Such a regime cannot operate without constant strain, without indefatigable energy, without infallible discernment, without military rigidity, without superior genius; on these conditions alone can one convert twenty-five millions of men into automatons and substitute his own will, lucid throughout, coherent throughout and everywhere present, for the wills of those he ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... whisky cocktails and a clean sheet of notepaper against the British Empire and all that lay therein. This work is very like what men without discernment call politics before a general election. You pick out and discuss, in the company of congenial friends, all the weak points in your opponents' organisation, and unconsciously dwell upon and exaggerate all their ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... not wish to absorb India herself, but she was committed to the policy of "Asia for the Asiatics," and it did not take much discernment to see that some day soon this would ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... of great talents, though deaf and dumb, who had been to a Deaf and Dumb Institution to be taught, with a view to become the master of a similar Institution in Russia, was asked the difference between intelligence and discernment? He said "Intelligence is a faculty, by which we distinguish good and evil, what is useful and what hurtful. I think discernment is the faculty of distinguishing the greater and less degrees ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe

... of high intellectual ability and keen discernment have mistaken the negroes' silence for contentment, his facial expression for satisfaction at prevailing conditions, and his songs and jovial air for happiness.[29] But this is not always so. These ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott

... believe that some moral truth, at least, is revealed to the individual by direct inspection (intueor), and that we must be content with such evidence and must not seek for proof. It may be maintained that our moral judgments—or some of them—are the result of "an immediate discernment of the natures of things by the understanding." and appeal may be made to the analogy furnished by mathematical truths. [Footnote: This appeal has been made by famous intuitionists from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth— Cudworth, More, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... regions, she excused herself by solemnly declaring, that "the brilliancy of the little darling's eyes, and his intoxicating manners, had made her feel as giddy as a goose." Collumpsion and Theresa both declared her discernment was equal to her caudle, of which, by-the-bye, she was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... seek protection in flight, lest the throne should be declared vacant, and he should thus lose his crown. He was ever hoping that affairs would soon take such a turn that harmony would be restored to his distracted kingdom. Maria Antoinette, however, who had a much more clear discernment of the true state of affairs, soon felt convinced that reconciliation, unless effected by the arm of power, was hopeless, and she exerted all her influence to rouse the king to vigorous measures for escape. While firmly resolved ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... right notion of God. 'Why,' said I, 'how know you that? Are you God, that you are able to judge what God should be? Through Christ, in very deed, have we won to know God; but that is by reason of the knowledge and authority of Him that revealed Him, not by the clear discernment and just judgment of us that received that revelation.' I do tell thee, Lettice—what with this man o' the one side with his philosophical follies, and Parson Turnham on the other, with his heathenish fooleries, I am at times well-nigh ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... praising, and, without interest, we never praise any one. Praise is a cunning flattery, hidden and delicate, which, in different ways, pleases him who gives and him who receives it. The one takes it as a reward for his merit: the other gives it to show his equity and his discernment. ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... and of people as they are—of their occupations, families, and institutions, their ideas and ideals—may we not to some extent discern, then patiently plan out, at length boldly suggest, something of [Page: 117] their actual or potential development? And may not, must not, such discernment, such planning, while primarily, of course, for the immediate future, also take account of the remoter and higher issues which a city's indefinitely long life and correspondingly needed foresight and statesmanship involve? Such a volume would thus differ widely from the traditional and contemporary ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... language. Now all we want to know are facts, let the conclusions be whatever they may. It is by no means easy to decide whether savage tribes have a religion or not; at all events it requires the same discernment, and the same honesty of purpose as to find out whether men of the highest intellect among us have a religion or not. Icall the Introduction to Spencer's "First Principles" deeply religious, but I can well understand that a missionary, reporting ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... Carlyle, Chelsea, London. She was born at Haddington 14th July, 1801; only child of the above John Welsh and of Grace Welsh, Caplegell, Dumfriesshire, his wife. In her bright existence she had more sorrows than are common, but also a soft invincibility, a clearness of discernment, and a noble loyalty of heart which are rare. For forty years she was the true and loving helpmate of her husband, and by act and word unweariedly forwarded him as none else could in all of worthy that he did or attempted. She died ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle

... had been accorded to the virile magnificence of King Charles, albeit one there was of the ladies, who, being a Ghibelline, joined not therein, Pampinea, having received the king's command, thus began:—None is there of discernment, worshipful my ladies, that would say otherwise than you have said touching good King Charles, unless for some other cause she bear him a grudge; however, for that there comes to my mind the, perchance ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... a well-trained horse when touched by the whip, be ye active and lively, and by faith, by virtue, by energy, by meditation, by discernment of the law you will overcome this great pain (of reproof), perfect in knowledge and in behaviour, and ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown

... clearly enough, into a theory of practice. But of what possible intellectual formula could this mystic Cornelius be the sensible exponent; seeming, as he did, to live ever in close relationship with, and recognition of, a mental view, a source of discernment, a light upon his way, which had certainly not yet sprung up for Marius? Meantime, the discretion of Cornelius, his energetic clearness and purity, were a charm, rather physical than moral: his exquisite correctness ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... Instead of undertaking particular recommendations on this subject in which I could be guided by no lights derived from official opportunities, I shall again give way to my entire confidence in your discernment and pursuit of the public good, for I assure myself that while you carefully avoid every alteration which might endanger the benefits of an united and effective government, or which ought to await the future lessons of experience, a reverence for the characteristic ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

... covenant itself, is the main thing. It was fitting that God's friend should be in the secret of His purposes. 'The servant knoweth not what his lord doeth,' but the friend does. And so we have here the assurance that faith will pierce to the discernment of much of the mind of God, which is hid from sense and the wisdom of this world. If we would know, we must believe. We may be 'men of God's counsel,' and see deeply into the realities of the present, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... analogy, but really true as a tendency, not only with regard to man's gains by the conquest of electricity, but also with respect to every other signal victory which has brought him to his present pinnacle of discernment and rule. If this permutative principle in former advances lay undetected, it stands forth clearly in that latest accession to skill and interpretation which has been ushered in by Franklin and Volta, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... it fails," Jesus says with fine discernment. Money will fail. There is an end to the power of gold in itself. Money will be bankrupt some day. It has enormous buying power now. Some day its buying power will be all gone. Then it will take the place of cobble-stones. Yet it would seem to be a failure there ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon

... a man of his type has generally some object beyond the mere acquiring of money, particularly after it has been acquired, he had his, to rise high, for he was very ambitious. His natural discernment set all his own failings before him in the clearest light; also their consequences. He knew that he was vulgar and brutal, and that as a result all persons of real gentility looked down upon him, however much they might seem to cringe before his money and power, yes, though they chanced to be ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... all animals. But its reasoning faculties are undoubtedly far below those of the dog, and possibly of other animals; and in matters beyond the range of its daily experience it evinces no special discernment. Whilst quick at comprehending anything sought to be taught to it, the elephant is decidedly wanting ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... indolence; jealousy. Lack of attention to business; of application; of adaptation; of ambition; of business methods; of capital; of conservatism; of close attention to business; of confidence in self; of careful accounting; of careful observation; of definite purpose; of discipline in early life; of discernment of character; of enterprise; of energy; of economy; of faithfulness; of faith in one's calling; of industry; of integrity; of judgment; of knowledge of business requirements; of manly character; of natural ability; of perseverance; of pure principles; ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... the Baron was awed; and he had much talk with Christopher, who opened his heart to him. The Abbot found that he could read, and knew the stories of the saints and the answers of the Mass, and had discernment of good and evil. So the Abbot sought out the Baron, and told him that Christopher would make a very wise priest, and that he was apt to be ruled, and therefore, said he, he will be apt to rule; and he added that he thought that ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... greater convenience in thinking. Such is, however, not the case with man. If the human mind were to attempt to examine and pass a judgment on all the individual cases before it, the immensity of detail would soon lead it astray and bewilder its discernment: in this strait, man has recourse to an imperfect but necessary expedient, which at once assists and demonstrates his weakness. Having superficially considered a certain number of objects, and remarked their resemblance, he assigns to them a common name, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... not have had Mary; without an ape we could not have had Abraham; and—shocking blasphemy—without a centipede we could not have had Christ! Praise God, we may turn from this to the words of God; "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant

... Was it to be sought for in the corners of earth, or was it not beneficially centred in ourselves? Was it not the exercise of a power easy for us to use, if we would dare to do so? Was it not the simple exertion of the discernment granted to us for all else? Was it not the exercise of our reason? 'Reason!' cried the Zealot, 'pernicious and hateful instrument, it is fraught with peril to yourself and to others: do not think for a moment of employing an engine so fallacious and so dangerous.' But I listened not to the ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... honourable bluntness becoming his supposed military profession; his hectoring passed for courage, and his sauciness for wit. Lest, however, any one should think this a violation of probability, we must add, in fairness to the two ladies, that their discernment was greatly blinded, and their favour propitiated, by the opportune arrival of Captain Craigengelt in the moment when they were longing for a third hand to make a party at tredrille, in which, as in all games, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... the utterance of an experienced man; and in many ways true, for one of the most singular gifts, or, if abused, most singular weaknesses, of the human mind is its power of persuading itself to see whatever it chooses;—a great gift, if directed to the discernment of the things needful and pertinent to its own work and being; a great weakness, if directed to the discovery of things profitless or discouraging. In all things throughout the world, the men who look for the crooked will see the crooked, and the men who look ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... of singular merit" whom Lodovico attracted to his court and retained in his service, were his two secretaries, Bartolommeo Calco and Jacopo Antiquario of Perugia. Both were men of great learning and discernment, fired with the same passion for arts and letters as their master, and as liberal as he was in assisting poorer scholars. Calco was Lodovico's right hand and chief adviser in his great schemes for beautifying cities and palaces. He delivered his orders to the countless ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... is to rob me of my eyes, if it is to darken the day, I will have none of it. It should be expansive and inconceivably liberalizing in its effects. True Friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance. A want of discernment cannot be an ingredient in it. If I can see my Friend's virtues more distinctly than another's, his faults too are made more conspicuous by contrast. We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend. Faults are not the less faults ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... tranquillity; he had himself shaved every day by a barber who had been mad and who detested him, being jealous of M. Gillenormand on account of his wife, a pretty and coquettish barberess. M. Gillenormand admired his own discernment in all things, and declared that he was extremely sagacious; here is one of his sayings: "I have, in truth, some penetration; I am able to say when a flea bites me, from ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... (Cyclops the Charioteer), I, and others known to me, studied the diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, a word too elegant to be pedantic. As a pupil, though I paid extra fees, it is to be lamented that I did not stand high in his esteem. It showed his dogged honesty (though, observe, not his discernment) that he could not see my merits. Let us excuse his absurdity in this particular by remembering his want of an eye. Doubtless that made him blind to my merits. In the art of conversation, however, he admitted that I had the whip-hand of him. On the present occasion great ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... merrily at the small invalid's powers of discernment, and were finally persuaded to attend the party which was barred to her. So they donned their daintiest dresses, robbed the greenhouse for their adornment, kissed the little sister fondly and hurried away into the night. Peace listened to the sound of their footsteps crunching through the hard-packed ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown

... price, and excluding the small fry of petty capitalists); and effectually imposed on them as a man with a vast knowledge of public business, in the confidence of great men at home, considerable influence with the English press, etc. And no discredit to their discernment; for Jack, when he pleased, had a way with him that was almost irresistible. In this manner he contrived to associate himself and his earnings with men really of large capital and long practical experience in the best mode by which that capital might be ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... said Mary Almira was a young lady of very pleasing face and form and agreeable manners, it is by no means improbable that he (Roswell) manifested to said Mary Almira that in those matters he was not wholly devoid of sensibility and discernment." The next morning Mary returned to Brattleboro with Mrs. Jonathan, and Roswell "did not then expect ever to ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... unwilling to lighten a situation that bordered on intensity. "You should have married and had children. The South needs such mothers as you would have made. Unless the men of Clarendon have lost their discernment, unless chivalry has vanished and the fire died out of the Southern blood, it has not been for lack of opportunity ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... then received the Holy Ghost. By this is meant, that by all they had witnessed and suffered, they were roused to an enlarged understanding of divine Sci- 47:1 ence, even to the spiritual interpretation and discernment of Jesus' teachings and demonstrations, which gave them 47:3 a faint conception of the Life which is God. They no longer measured man by material sense. After gaining the true idea of their glorified Master, 47:6 they became better healers, leaning no longer on matter, but on the divine Principle ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... friends in the course of the evening casually and familiarly dropt. This circumstance, slight in itself, seemed to point to the existence of a certain humor in the man, which might eventually get into literature; altho his wife's lover—a man of quick discernment, whose leg was broken by the fall—took other views. It was some weeks later that while dining with certain other friends of his wife, he excused himself from the table, to quietly reappear at the front window with a three-quarter-inch hydraulic pipe, and a stream of water projected ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... continued, it will prove a curse and blight to American citizenship and American institutions. There was a time in our history when the better class of foreign immigrants and our own population was able to swallow up the less desirable class, but it takes no great discernment now to see the congested spots here and there on our body politic. In this lies the danger. Such a change in the character of immigration as herein shown cannot have taken place without materially affecting ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... and the facetious and jocular companion. Though he loved good cheer, and frequented the houses of the rich or more hospitable people of America, yet he was an enemy to all manner of excess and intemperance. While his vagrant temper led him from place to place, his natural discernment enabled him to form no bad judgment of the characters and manners of men wherever he went. Though he appeared a friend to no established church, yet good policy winked at all his irregularities, as he every where proved a steady ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt

... Van Torp. It was easy enough to tell him what she had learned about Feist from Logotheti; it was even possible that he had found it out for himself, and had not taken the trouble to inform her of the fact. Apart from the approval that friendship inspires, she had always admired the cool discernment of events which he showed when great things were at stake. But it was one thing, she now told him, to be indifferent to the stupid attacks of the press, it would be quite another to allow himself to be accused of murder; the time had come when he must act, and without delay; ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... reply to the suggestions of the envoys that some of the conditions were of little value to the French, he answered: "The Republic, in intrusting to me the command of an army, has credited me with possessing enough discernment to judge of what that army requires, without having recourse to the advice of my enemy." Apart, however, from this sarcasm, which was uttered in a hard and biting voice, his tone was coldly polite. He reserved his home thrust for the close of the conference. When it had ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... school of thought. He only endeavoured as a scholar and a student to clear up his own thoughts and help others to clear theirs, whether in the intellectual or the moral world. This was the help he steadfastly hoped to give the people, that interacting union of intellectual freedom and moral discernment which may be furthered by good education and training, by precept and example, that basis of all social health and prosperity. And if, as he said, he would like to be remembered as one who had done ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... acted,' she cried; 'I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity in ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... how much I fear lest pride it be; But if that pride it be, which thus inspires, Beware, ye dames! with nice discernment see Ye quench not too the sparks of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... the last, the only intimation I had ever heard from Grace, of her being conscious of any defect in Rupert's character. Would to God she had seen this important deficiency earlier! though this is wishing a child to possess the discernment and intelligence of a woman. The hand was still on my cheek, and I would not have had it removed at that bitter moment to have been well assured ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... the confused seas, and knoweth not Beyond the sound he lists: and then came in O'erhead the white light of the weary moon, Diffused and molten into flaky cloud. Was my sight drunk, that it did shape to me Him who should own that name? or had my fancy So lethargised discernment in the sense, That she did act the step-dame to mine eyes, Warping their nature, till they minister'd Unto her swift conceits? 'Twere better thus If so be that the memory of that sound With mighty evocation, had updrawn The fashion and the phantasm of the form It should attach to. There was no ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... that before Mrs. Garrett Anderson was born, Ipswich had a lady physician in the person of Miss Stebbing, daughter of the doctor to whom I have already referred. 'She was,' says one who knew her well, 'a woman of general education, with more than ordinary tact and discernment, combined with the true womanly power of analyzing and observing. She had good physical powers, and, like her worthy father, was somewhat pungent in her remarks and eccentric in her habits. She entered the ranks as a ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... with Tony, and left him completely nonplussed by her uncanny discernment when, after he had stumbled through the revelation of his engagement to Doreen Neville, during one of the intervals, she promptly told him she had anticipated it long ago ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... (which he could not tell from Mrs. Temperly's manner, but could from their own) recognised her as a daughter much more quickly than they recognised Dora, who hung back disinterestedly, as if not to challenge their discernment, while the current passed her, keeping her little sister in position on its brink meanwhile by the ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... is your misfortune, Mr. Lovelace, as well as mine, at present. Every woman of discernment, I say as I say, [I had a mind to mortify a pride, that I am sure deserves to be mortified;] that your politeness is not regular, nor constant. It is not habit. It is too much seen by fits and starts, and sallies, and those not spontaneous. You must ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... shadow over personal and collective interests, and poisoned the springs of human kindness in many hearts. It was not alone hurtful to the slave: it transformed and blackened character everywhere, and fascinated those who were anxious for riches beyond the power of moral discernment. Here, however, as in New Jersey, the Negro found the Quaker his practical friend; and his upper and better life received the pruning advice, refining and elevating influence, of a godly people. But intelligence in the slave was an occasion of offending, and prepared him to realize ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... an impulse might be expected to come from the work of Mr. James Lane Allen. He has published few books as yet, but the number is sufficient to reveal a steadily increasing mastery of his art, and the quality such as to warrant readers of discernment in predicting for him a brilliant career and an assured place in the front rank of American writers. The Choir Invisible does not disappoint these expectations. It is not only the most ambitious of Mr. Allen's books, considered merely as to its sale, but it is also the one in which he has ...
— James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work • Macmillan Company

... which High Office your Lordship deservedly bears; not as an Acquisition of Fortune, but your Intellectual Endowments; Conspicuous (among other Excellencies) by the Inclination Your Lordship discovers to promote Natural Knowledge: As it justifies the Discernment of that Assembly, to pitch upon Your Lordship for their President, so does it no less discover the Candor, yea, I presume to say, the Sublimity of your Mind, in so generously honoring them with your Acceptance of the Choice they ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn

... raise the standard of civilization and hasten the time when all men shall pay homage to the ruler of the universe. As inventions are developed which make the worker more effective, which broaden the field of usefulness, there come responsibilities and problems which require education and discernment to meet and solve. Under the softened touch of Christianity, religion and education there should come about a universal brotherhood of man broad enough in scope to embrace all humanity. In all the work of the world, in all that is for the development ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... said I, "and the fool who gave it me!" And I showed my leg, with the blood trickling down. "I had killed a Turk," said I, "and this muddlehead with no discernment had the impudence to try to finish the ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy

... dread and presentiment of trouble. Instinctively, and almost involuntarily, she grew slightly reserved and distant in manner, ceasing to meet his gaze in her former frank, affectionate way. With quick discernment he appreciated the change, and thought, "She is not ready yet, and, indeed, may never be ready." His manner, too, began to change, as a cloud gradually loses something of its warmth of color. Mara was grateful, and in her thoughts paid homage to ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... fellows of promising appearance' who volunteered to go with them—Mr. Tradition, Mr. Human Wisdom, and Mr. Man's Invention.' They were allowed to join, and were placed in positions of trust, the captains of the covenant being apparently wanting in discernment. They were taken prisoners in the first skirmish, and immediately changed sides and went over to Diabolus. More battles follow. The roof of the Lord Mayor's house is beaten in. The law is not wholly ineffectual. Six of the Aldermen, the grosser moral sins—Swearing, Stand to Lies, Drunkenness, ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... and wife came up together, he somewhat lumbering, as if Mrs. Blake's character were too much for his discernment, and Mrs. Manlius not quite sure of herself when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... possible that by reason of this grave taciturnity the clergyman won more surely upon the respect of his people. "He is engrossed," said they, "with greater matters; and in all secular affairs he recognizes our superior discernment." Thus his inaptitude in current speech was construed by them into a delicate flattery. They greatly relished his didactic, argumentative sermonizing, since theirs was a religion not so much of the sensibilities ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... the club and the card-table that night; over the bits of pasteboard, however, his zest failed to flare high, although instinctively he played with a discernment that came from long practice. But the sight of a handful of gold pieces here, of a little pile there, the varying shiftings of the bright disks, as the vagaries of chance sent them this way or that, seemed to move him in no great degree,—perhaps because the winning or ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... is—the Loadstar! The summit of Ron's ambition. It's the magazine of all others which he likes and admires, and the editor is known to be a man of great power and discernment. It is said that if he has the will, he can do more than any man in London to help on young writers. It is useless sending manuscripts, for he refuses to consider unsolicited poetical contributions. He shuts himself up in a fastness in Fleet Street, and the door thereof is guarded with dragons with ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... women like that," said a countryman with a grin, as he pointed to a photograph of one of Tintoret's most beautiful groups, "smoking cigarettes." And the mass of people in most northern countries have still passed little beyond this stage of discernment; in ability to distinguish between the beautiful and the obscene they are still on the level of the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... acquired wisdom might point even she dared not consider. Any other girl must have remained sufficiently alive to the enormous disparity every way between herself and the artist; and Joan grasped the difference, but from the wrong point of view. The man's delicacy of discernment, his wisdom, his love of the things which she loved, his fine feeling, his humility—all combined in Joan's judgment to place him far above herself, though she had not words to name the qualities; but whereas another lowly ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... changes, we would not forget the creation of a new office. Many healing remedies, foreign, rare, and wonderful, have been brought for the use of the Faculty from Egypt and Arabia Felix. It was proper that some worthy, capable man, of quick discernment, should have charge of these most precious remedies. Accordingly, the Faculty has chosen a curator to be called the 'Apothecarius.' Many quacks and cheats have desired to hold the new office; but the present occupant has thrown all others into the ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... little more discernment, she would have discovered that what wrought this miracle was a friendly courtesy, that never failed to either equal ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... corrupted Nature; because its motion left unto itself draweth men away to evil and to lower things. For the little power which remaineth is as it were one spark lying hid in the ashes. This is Natural reason itself, encompassed with thick clouds, having yet a discernment of good and evil, a distinction of the true and the false, though it be powerless to fulfil all that it approveth, and possess not yet the full light of truth, ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis

... only plan for the Wilderness battle was to stand, having done all to stand, to resist every effort to move Him a hair's breadth from His position. That battle brought Him great suffering; it took, and it tested, all His strength of discernment, and decision, of determined set persistence, and of dependent, deep-breathed praying. And through these the gracious power of the Spirit worked, and so the victory, ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... suffered. Such material might well have tempted to a mere piling of squalor upon squalor. A fine discretion has given a noble dignity to a record through which shines the unquenchable human spirit. One passage, full of affectionate discernment about London, will cause a flicker of just pride in everyone who is authentic Cockney, whether by birth or adoption. A big book of its kind, I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various

... who now addresses you. It would ill become me to say that you only did me justice; but permit me to remark, that having closely watched myself and compared myself with others, for years, I have come to the conclusion that I am blessed with a rapid discernment. Before Mrs. Flowerdew (I have written the delightful name on every corner of my blotting-paper) honoured me with her hand, I brought this power to bear on her incessantly. Under all kinds of vexatious circumstances ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... be sure, had personal qualities which could not but appeal to people of discernment. Her plain features expressed a simplicity and gentleness which more than compensated for the lack of conventional grace in her manners; she spoke softly and with obvious frankness, nor was there much fault to find with her phrasing and accent; dressed a little more elegantly, she would ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... with regard to ourselves. A man may become very earnest, may take in all the teaching he hears; he may be able to discern, for discernment is a gift; he may say, "That man helps me in this line, and that man in another direction, and a third man is remarkable for another gift;" yet, all the time, the carnal life may be living strongly in him, and when he gets into trouble with some friend, or Christian worker, ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray

... of mental faculty that we are attributing, all this while, to the uneducated class of our people, in thus exposing the defectiveness of their discernment between right and wrong. If it were, there might arise somewhat of the consolation afforded in contemplating some of the very lowest of the savage tribes of mankind, by the idea that such outcasts of the rational nature ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... evening there is eating); und Andere werden gelastert (and others are abused) (392. V. 114). This side of the linguistic inventiveness of childhood, with its double-entendre, its puns, its folk-etymologies, its keen discernment of hidden resemblances and analogies, deserves more study ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... blacksmith could reply, Mother Bunch, who had more discernment, exclaimed: "Goodness, Agricola—how pale you ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... that we should afford to our fellow-men requires of us great discernment in its administration. The deceitfulness of appearances is endless. And nothing can well be at the same time more lamentable and more ludicrous, than the spectacle of those persons, the weaver, the thresher, and the mechanic, who by injudicious ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... other members were Wm. D. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, and Calvin T. Hurlburd, of New York. As chairman of the committee on the Library of the United States, to employ the language of its accomplished librarian, he had "a clear discernment and quick apprehension of all things that needed to be done;" he "threw his influence in favor of the most liberal ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... suspected that she wanted the valuable quality of firmness, which in her position was especially necessary; for she already possessed a good fortune, and would inherit a considerable one. Her father, although a sailor of the old school, was not destitute of discernment, and thoroughly understanding her character, earnestly wished to see her married to a sensible, upright man, who would protect her and take good care of her property. He had therefore given every encouragement ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston

... be learnt without profound study. It may not perhaps be truly asserted that Lord Chiltern answered this description in every detail; but he combined so many of the qualities required that his wife showed her discernment when she declared that he seemed to have been made to be a Master ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... he was regarded by his contemporaries in both these lights, and that too in the highest degree, is sufficiently evident. We may thence infer, that the great poets in the subsequent age must have done violence to their own liberality and discernment, when, in compliment to Augustus, whose sensibility would have been wounded by the praises of Cicero, and even by the mention of his name, they have so industriously avoided the subject, as not to afford the ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... and home again. Grandmother said that when she saw him opening the gate for me, she understood my zeal in missionary work. "The dear little lady," as we often call her, has always been noted for her keen discernment and wonderful sagacity and loses none of it as she advances in years. Some one asked Anna the other day if her Grandmother retained all her faculties and Anna said, "Yes, indeed, to an alarming degree." Grandmother knows ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... dear Lord, you will perceive that whatever has been done relating to Hobart in the conclusion of this arrangement for India, has received the sanction of his nearest relations, of persons whose affectionate friendship for Hobart, and just discernment of his interests, will readily be acknowledged by you. In a situation of peculiar delicacy and embarrassment, it has been a great satisfaction to me to have been able to submit every step which I have taken in this ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... Discernment of purpose in God's 'bitter' dealings—'for our profit.' The dry rod 'budded.' The Prophet's roll was first bitter, then sweet. Affliction 'afterwards yieldeth the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... order to get the wherewith to die a martyr's death; and it makes it very hard to trust his simple truth in future. But if (as one friend of his thinks) Mazzini's own opinion has changed, it lowers one's notion of his discernment. In fact, it is scarcely credible to me. There are those, I find, who have lately helped him to money, expressly thinking it was a going to martyrdom, but believing he was bent on it, and that possibly he may ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... said Mr. Wyllys. "I befriended your genius, you know, in the days of the slate and compound interest; and, of course, I shall think it due to my own discernment ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... and inscribed; and he ordered that their writing should be read: therefore the sheykh Abd-Es-Samad advanced and examined them and read them; and they contained admonition, and matter for example and restraint, unto those endowed with faculties of discernment. Upon the first tablet was inscribed, in the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... of his friends the Boy found welcome and a supper, but no news of his parents. He told his experiences in the Temple, and the friends heard him, wondering at his discernment. They were in doubt whether to let him go again the next day; but he begged so earnestly, arguing that they could tell his parents where he was if they should come to the camp seeking him, that ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke

... been placed by thieves on the boundary line south from this place. It is concealed there, and before it is carried off to a distance, as it will be at close of day, go quickly and bring it." When they heard that, many men ran and brought the horse quickly, praising the discernment of Harisarman. Then Harisarman was honoured by all men as a sage, and dwelt there in happiness, honoured ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs

... approach to the truth would be to describe it as a light of purity which, notwithstanding the popular idea to the contrary, is quite as often to be found upon the faces of men as upon those of women. Any person of discernment looking on Colonel Quaritch must have felt that he was in the presence of a good man—not a prig or a milksop, but a man who had attained by virtue of thought and struggle that had left their marks upon him, a man whom it would not be well to tamper with, one to be respected by all, ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... has distinguished Your self this way, and every Science has raised it self under Your Auspicious Bounty. So true a Notion of Merit, and so nice a Discernment of what is Curious, is but rarely found among Persons of an advanced Age; but You my Lord, by an uncommon Felicity of Genius, do even in the Bloom of Youth make Your Entrance in the World with the most ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym

... eyes, more important matters than Miss Elisabeth Farringdon and her whims and fancies. And what woman, worthy of the name, could extend mercy to a man who had openly displayed so flagrant a want of taste and discernment as this? Certainly not Elisabeth, nor any other fashioned after her pattern. She felt that she had as much right to be angry as had the prophet, when Almighty Wisdom saw fit to save the great city in which he was not particularly interested, and to ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... not extend his observations beyond the voltaic arc; he did not offer any explanation of the lines of Fraunhofer; he did not arrive at any conception of solar chemistry, or of the constitution of the sun. His beautiful experiment remained a germ without fruit, until the discernment, ten years subsequently, of the whole class of phenomena to which it belongs, enabled Kirchhoff to solve these ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... the same principles held good with stakes of value, he seemed to enter upon the possession of a veritable gold mine. The peculiar traits that his one unique experience of the world had developed—his coolness, his courage, his discernment of strategic resources—stood him in good stead, and long after the microcosm of the hotel lay fast asleep the cards were dealt and play ran high in the little building called the casino, ostensibly devoted to the milder delights ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... validity of their testimony. And the various parties, pointing out reciprocally to each other, the contradictions, improbabilities, and forgeries, accused one another of having established their belief on popular rumors, vague traditions, and absurd fables, invented without discernment, and admitted without examination by unknown, partial, or ignorant writers, at uncertain ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... but did not materially advance the study.[30] The compendium of Baumgarten Crusius,[31] and that of F.K. Meier,[32] stand out prominently among them. The work of the former is distinguished by its independent learning as well as by the discernment of the author that the centre of gravity of the subject lies in the so-called general history of dogma.[33] The work of Meier goes still further, and accurately perceives that the division into a general and special history of dogma must be altogether given up, while ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... doing everything for the best, fearful of cabal, distrusting his own judgment, he sought his ministers of all kinds upon public testimony. But as courts are the field for caballers, the public is the theatre for mountebanks and impostors. The cure for both those evils is in the discernment of the prince. But an accurate and penetrating discernment is what in a young prince could not ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... head of the new Government. He is not a Demagogue, he has written no despatches, nor made any speeches, nor decreed any Utopian reforms after the manner of his colleagues. But, unlike them, he is a practical man of business, and this the working men have had discernment enough to discover. They are hardly to be blamed if they have accepted literally the rhetorical figures of Jules Favre. When he said that, rather than yield one stone of a French fortress, Paris would bury itself beneath its ruins, they believed it. I need ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... true representative of the influence and ideas of New England? Or that the present Copperhead Democracy of that section is the real exponent of the genuine spirit of the Puritan Democracy? Certainly not. They are shrewd men, of great discernment, and in their way brave and chivalrous, and I verily do not wonder if they would not have these renegade Yankees even as slaves. No! the actual cause of their hatred is the silent, all-pervading influence of the free institutions of New England, which derive their power and efficacy from the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... accused of swerving from the imitation of so great an example, were not I to take occasion to shew that I too am not entirely destitute of abilities of this kind; but that by possessing a decent share of critical discernment, and critical jargon, I am capable of becoming a very tolerable commentator. For the proof of which, I shall rather prefer calling the attention of my readers to an object as yet untreated of by any of my immediate ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe

... other consideration, that a man's confidence is not the product of outward circumstances, but of his own fixed resolves. 'I will put my trust in Thee.' Nature says, 'Be afraid!' and the recoil from that natural fear, which comes from a discernment of threatening evil, is only possible by a strong effort of the will. Foolish confidence opposes to natural fear a groundless resolve not to be afraid, as if heedlessness were security, or facts could be altered by resolving not to think about them. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... critic in HOMER I have ever met with, the learned and ingenious Mr. FUSELI. Unknown as he was to me when I entered on this arduous undertaking (indeed to this moment I have never seen him) he yet voluntarily and generously offered himself as my revisor. To his classical taste and just discernment I have been indebted for the discovery of many blemishes in my own work, and of beauties, which would otherwise have escaped me, in the original. But his necessary avocations would not suffer him to accompany me farther than to the latter books of the Iliad, a circumstance ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... sunlit garden. In build and appearance, Tuppy somewhat resembles a bulldog, and his aspect now was that of one of these fine animals who has just been refused a slice of cake. It was not difficult for a man of my discernment to read what was in his mind, and it occasioned me no surprise, therefore, when his next words had to do with the subject marked with a cross on the ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... current of London society. But the admirable training in strict moral principles with which she had been privileged furnished weapons of defence against the more specious temptations which presented themselves; whilst her quick discernment easily penetrated the thin shell of external polish covering worthlessness of character. It was also fortunate for her that at the outset of her London experience she became acquainted with such a sterling ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... to the window was the very man who stabbed George Colwan in the back, and she said she was willing to take her oath on it at any time when required, and was certain, if the wretch Ridsley saw him, that he would make oath to the same purport, for that his walk was so peculiar no one of common discernment ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... supported by unimpeachable reference: not one word shall be uttered which I am not as willing to print as to speak. I have no quibbles to utter, and I shall stoop to answer none; but, with full faith in the sufficiency of a plain statement of facts and reasons, I submit the subject to the discernment of my audience. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... in writing now is to tell you how pleased His Majesty is with the working of the German Hero Fund. He is enthusiastic about it and spoke in most complimentary terms of your discernment, as well as your generosity in founding it. He did not believe it would fill so important a place as it is doing. He told me of several cases that are really touching, and which would otherwise have been wholly unprovided for. One was ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... very time, over in the hotel at Sintaluta, a grain grower of great ability and discernment was warning an interested group of farmers against the ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... would fail with a man of your honour and discernment, they might have more effect on the young mind of your child. Think, I beseech you, the more she is set against me, the more accessible she may be to the arts of Peschiera. Speak not, therefore, I implore you, to Lord L'Estrange till Violante ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Faces" Taylor and Reade had collaborated, and the exact share of each in the result was left to one's own discernment. I remember saying to Taylor one night at dinner when Reade was sitting opposite me, that I wished he (Taylor) would write me a part like that. "If only I could have an ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... sagely in swift discernment of this evident truth, for Artemise was now tired of the subject and of Pauline's endless farewells and preferred to look ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... men—men of strongest mentality, scholarly, cultured, thoughtful men, and every other sort. Yet men have often been befooled in their leaders. He drew women. Here is a great test. Men may be deceived in a man. But woman, true strong woman, pure womanly woman, because of her keen discernment into spirit and motive, cannot be deceived, when true to her ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon

... outward appearance has been polished up, pray look after the interests of my inner man," said the Baron, placing his hands to his heart. "I shall ever bear in mind the polite attention with which you have treated me, though it will take some time to forget the want of discernment your townsmen have exhibited in mistaking me for that abominable cat-man. What could have induced him to play such ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston

... God for his moral life because he has free will. He cannot excuse his evil deed on the ground of necessity. Even in the face of planetary influence and of temptation from within, by his evil inclinations, and from without by solicitation of other agents man has still such discernment between good and evil and such power to make choice freely, that moral judgment with him is free. "Who hath been tried thereby and made perfect," says Holy Writ, "he shall have glory everlasting. He that could have transgressed, and hath not transgressed and could do ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... out the china, and she has the craze badly. Madame turns to inspect the cabinet. There is a true Capo di Monte, and some priceless Nankin, and here a set of rare intaglios. Some one must have had taste and discernment. Laura would like to cavil, but dares not. The professor tells of curiosities picked up in the buried cities of centuries ago,—lamps and pitchers and vases and jewels that he has sent to museums abroad,—and ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... mis-shaped into a specious patriotism. It is known how an ardently desired object pursued for a long period is apt to so monopolize and infatuate the mind as to totally vitiate and pervert the sense of discernment between right and wrong, both as to the legitimacy of the object and the means to be employed for its attainment. As the realization remains deferred and the efforts are increased, the object from being considered legitimate is by degrees invested with ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas

... them whom Allah prospereth, say I! And I mention this matter, for 'tis certain now Boolp will take another wife to him to comfort him, for there be two things beloved of Boolp, and therein manifesteth he taste and the discernment of excellence, and what is approved; and of these two things let the love of his hoards of the yellow-skinned treasure go first, and after that attachment to the silver-skinned of creation, the fair, the rapturous; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... was that John O'Neill's daughter carried her charms and gifts to London town in the autumn of 1812, when she justified Kemble's discernment by one of the most brilliant series of impersonations, ranging from Juliet to Belvidera, that had been seen up to that time on the English stage. For seven years she shone a very bright star in the firmament of the drama, winning ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... harvest time, which is in September and October, the Indians examine the trees with keen discernment, and inasmuch as the cones require two years to mature from the first appearance of the little red rosettes of the fertile flowers, the scarcity or abundance of the crop may be predicted more than a year in advance. Squirrels, and worms, and Clarke crows, make haste to begin ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... spoke of their regular course of action in ordinary circumstances. Like men, they also make mistakes sometimes, in certain cases; and take one substance for another, or do not recognize the one they are in need of; an unanswerable proof that at other times they exercise a sort of discernment, and do not act by a sort of fatality, as one might be tempted to believe. Look at the bones, for instance. They are composed of gelatine (which cooks serve up under the name of meat-jelly, but which would be more properly called bone-jelly), and of phosphate of lime, a ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... if not, in the second, he told a delightful story of a Berkshire labourer looking over a sty at a good litter of Berkshire grunters and remarking, "What I do say is this. We wants fewer of they black parsons and more of they black pigs." Be that as it may, no person of discernment ever wanted fewer Beechings, or fewer pages ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... and complex tendencies and aptitudes of Dr. Dewey in stimulating suggestions, which were refreshing as spring breezes. His mind gave hospitable welcome to each new fact disclosed by science, to all generous hopes for human refinement and ennobling ideals, while his discernment was keen to detect false sentiment or flashy sophisms. Again, some startling event would bring conventional customs and maxims to the judgment-bar of pure Christian ethics, when his moral indignation blazed forth with ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... Roman, was elevated by the command of Galba on a fairer and more lofty cross. Occasional rescripts issued from the throne to decide the questions which, by their novelty or importance, appeared to surpass the authority and discernment of a proconsul. Transportation and beheading were reserved for honorable persons; meaner criminals were either hanged, or burned, or buried in the mines, or exposed to the wild beasts of the amphitheatre. Armed robbers ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... candid, he spoke, attending his guest, hat in hand, to the outer gate, when it pleased him to depart. But, take it for all in all, there remained a certain doubtful feeling in Lord Hartledon's mind regarding the interview; for some subtle discernment had whispered to him that both Gum and his wife could have given him the description of Gordon, and ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... it is, Jack," said the latter, impressively; "I don't pretend to have more gumption (qu. discernment?) than my messmates; but I can see through a millstone as clear as any man as ever heaved a lead in these here lakes; and may I never pipe boatswain's whistle again, if you 'ar'n't, some how or other, in the wrong box. That 'ere ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... all right; and, if mankind's old foe, My "Lord Harry" himself—who's the leader, we know, Of another red-hot Opposition below— If that "Lord," in his well-known discernment, but spares Me and Lyndhurst, to look after Ireland's affairs, We shall soon such a region of devilment make it, That Old Nick himself for his own may mistake it. Even already—long life to such Bigwigs, say I, For, as long as they flourish, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... the most exacting of all the Arts, the cultivation of which presents the greatest difficulties, for a consummate interpretation of a musical work so as to permit an appreciation of its real value, a clear view of its physiognomy, or discernment of its real meaning and true character, is only achieved in relatively few cases. Of creative artists, the composer is almost the only one who is dependent upon a multitude of intermediate agents between the public and himself; intermediate agents, ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz

... The antecedent causes are so wide-reaching, many, and continuous, that their direction is always sure to strike the eye of one or more observers in all its significance. Lewis the Fifteenth, whose invincible weariness and heavy disgust veiled a penetrating discernment, measured accurately the scope of the conflict between the crown and the parlements: but, said he, things as they are will last my time. Under the roof of his own palace at Versailles, in the apartment of Madame ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... himself takes its place as a natural intermediary factor. No literary "generation" is composed of men actually of the same age. Beside the quite young who are merely panting to express themselves, stand the mature who exercise an esthetic discernment, even as regards their own peculiar experience; finally, there are also the older men who have already said their say. In the same way every public is made up of people of all ages. These make different demands ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... is the artist? Toward no question has mankind's indolence and inertia of discernment proved more unyielding than toward this one. 'Such things are a gift,' humbly say the good people who are under the influence of an artist, and because cheerful and exalted effects, according to their good-natured view, must quite inevitably have cheerful and exalted origins, nobody suspects that ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... it's stranger still how folks alter," said Dane. "Now, they've a photograph at Barrington's of you as a boy, and while there is a resemblance in the face, nobody with any discernment would have fancied that lad would grow into a man like you. Still, that's of no great moment, and I want to know just how you spotted the gambler. I had a tolerably expensive tuition in most games of chance in my callow days, and haven't forgotten ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss

... he wanted to know who the caller was, who had directed the visit, and just what branch of the Federal service happened to be interested in the days of slavery. These questions satisfactorily answered, he went into his adventures and experiences, embellishing the highlights with uncommon discernment and very ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... Breaking off a leafy branch from a tree, he held it before him and stepped out from the thicket. The virgins, at sight of him, fled in all directions, Nausicaa alone excepted, for Minerva aided and endowed her with courage and discernment. Ulysses, standing respectfully aloof, told his sad case, and besought the fair object (whether queen or goddess he professed he knew not) for food and clothing. The princess replied courteously, promising present relief and her father's hospitality when he should ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... replied, "I never declared that my own likeness, or that of Pericles, was on the shield of heaven-born Pallas; nor can any Athenian prove that I ever intended to place them there. I am not answerable for offences which have their origin in the eyes of the multitude. If their quick discernment be the test, crimes may be found written even on the glowing embers of our household altars. I never said I approved the worship of the gods because I wished to have my own works adored; for I should have deemed it irreverent thus to speak of divine beings. Some learned and illustrious ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... in the ends of the earth, and in the very heavens themselves, you try to keep him to himself, to his own concerns, you will then find him able to perceive, to remember, and even to reason; this is nature's order. As the sentient being becomes active his discernment develops along with his strength. Not till his strength is in excess of what is needed for self-preservation, is the speculative faculty developed, the faculty adapted for using this superfluous strength for other purposes. Would you cultivate your pupil's ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... sympathetic appreciation, for they are as different as may be imagined from the spirit of mysticism. It must also be confessed that their absolute merit as poetry is not particularly remarkable; all the more credit to the discernment of A. E., who described behind them an original ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... sovereign pleasure, make one grow and expand more rapidly than another. As he can give symmetry and strength to your limbs, and clothe your features with beauty and grace, so he can make you quick of apprehension, clear of discernment, ready and tenacious to remember, delicate in your appreciation of what is beautiful. While, therefore, you are diligent in your studies, remember that the reward of your labor, after all, is the gift of God. You will neglect one essential means of intellectual progress, if you neglect prayer. ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... not say that either, monsieur. The welfare of my country before everything. God, who has given me the power, has, no doubt, willed that I should have that power for the good of all, and He has given me, at the same time, discernment. If the parliament were to order such a ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... of this injured party run the risk of being compromised through his inexperience. Moreover, the complaint of the child, often directed against its parents or its legal guardians, involves the examination of a delicate situation, which must be conducted with much discernment. Without comparing the two systems, American and French, which correspond each to the particular genius of the two nations, it will be seen that the American system leaves much more to private initiative, and that it would become ineffectual when the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various

... the opinion of Pestalozzi, and one which has ever since his day been gaining ground, that education of some kind should begin from the cradle. Whoever has watched, with any discernment, the wide-eyed gaze of the infant at surrounding objects knows very well that education does begin thus early, whether we intend it or not; and that these fingerings and suckings of everything it can lay hold of, these open-mouthed listenings to every sound, are first steps in the series which ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... deceitfulness, to all who hear him, Is, with the sight of all the good, that is, Blest there. The limbs, whence it was driven, lie Down in Cieldauro, and from martyrdom And exile came it here. Lo! further on, Where flames the arduous Spirit of Isidore, Of Bede, and Richard, more than man, erewhile, In deep discernment. Lastly this, from whom Thy look on me reverteth, was the beam Of one, whose spirit, on high musings bent, Rebuk'd the ling'ring tardiness of death. It is the eternal light of Sigebert, Who 'scap'd not envy, when of truth he argued, Reading in the straw-litter'd street." Forthwith, As clock, that ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... sonnets, and that there is much to show that he did write them, and that in what we know about Shakespeare there is little evidence that Shakespeare wrote those works, and much evidence that he did not write them, then we pull ourselves together, marshalling all our facts and all out literary discernment, so as to convince our interlocutor of his error. But why should we not do our task urbanely? The cyphers, certainly, are stupid and tedious things, deserving no patience. But the more intelligent Baconians spurn them as airily as do you or I. Our case is not so strong ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... is too far advanced to be thrown into a new method, I may be advertised of its defects or superfluities. Such informations I may justly hope, from the emulation with which those, who desire the praise of elegance or discernment, must contend in the promotion of a design that you, my Lord, have not thought unworthy to share your attention ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... Seeing the old lady coming down the walk towards them, they endeavored to adjust their looks, and to meet her with the wonted smile. But in vain. The tumult in their bosoms was still too visible in their looks to escape her discernment. She eagerly asked the cause. Their changing countenances served but to increase her fears and the vehemence of her curiosity. The bishop's letter was put into her hands. Its effects on the good old lady were truly distressing. ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... hearts are unduly fixed on the mammon of the world, they allow many little inconsistencies in their children to escape their reproof. But, besides this, as the religion and the love of the mammon of the world are at variance, they have a less spiritual discernment than before. Hence they do not see the same irregularities in the same light. From this omission to check these irregularities on the one hand, and from this decay of their spiritual vision on the other, their children have greater liberties ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... this competition for all kinds of news by the reporters hanging about the city, the government, and the army. Some of these reporters are men of sense, discernment, and character; but for the sake of competition and priority they fish up and pick up what they can, what comes in their way, even if such news is altogether beyond common sense, or ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... hair-breadth 'scapes, perils by sea and land, heroisms of the hero, fine shrieks of the heroine; no set scenes of catching pathos and humour; no distinguishable points of social satire—equivalent to a smacking of the public on the chaps, which excites it to grin with keen discernment of the author's intention. She did not appeal to the senses nor to a superficial discernment. So she had the anticipatory sense of its failure; and she wrote her best, in perverseness; of course she wrote slowly; she wrote more and more realistically ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... kept him away from home much of the time during my boyhood, and as a consequence I grew up under the sole guidance and training of my mother, whose excellent common sense and clear discernment in every way fitted her for such maternal duties. When old enough I was sent to the village school, which was taught by an old-time Irish "master"—one of those itinerant dominies of the early frontier—who, holding that to spare the rod was to spoil the child, if unable to ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... however, though incapable of executing, or even of appreciating, anything of true sublimity, had nevertheless discernment enough to prevent his being by any means satisfied with his work; and many were the patient erasures and corrections which the limbs and features of saint and devil underwent, yet all without producing ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... revised his first estimate of the theatrical profession. Shallow, empty-headed creatures some of them might be, no doubt, but there were exceptions. Here was a girl of real discernment—a thoughtful student of character—a girl who understood that a man might sit at a supper-party without uttering a word and might still ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

... doubts of her, such as girls have of their brothers' heroines. They were not inconsolably sorry to have her prove unkind; and their mother found in the probable event another proof of their father's total want of discernment where women were concerned, for the elder Mavering had come home from Class Day about as much smitten with this mysterious Miss Pasmer as Dan was. She talked it over indignantly with her daughters; they were glad of Dan's escape, but they were incensed ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... also, was ill at ease; and Robin with a man's slow discernment at last saw that it was because of her boy's attire. He thought bluntly that there was naught to be ashamed of, yet smilingly handed her his tattered long cloak, which she blushingly put on, and forthwith ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... who then doubted the absolute distinctness of species, and special creations of them. Yet I, like the rest, failed to detect the quo modo which was reserved for your penetration to DISCOVER, and your discernment to APPLY. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... door, this is the kind of answer Jones would give you. You get truth habitually from equals only; so my good Mr. Holyshade, don't talk to me about the habitual candor of the young Etonian of high birth, or I have my own opinion of YOUR candor or discernment when you do. No. Tom Bowling is the soul of honor and has been true to Black-eyed Syousan since the last time they parted at Wapping Old Stairs; but do you suppose Tom is perfectly frank, familiar, and aboveboard in his conversation with Admiral Nelson, K.C.B.? There are secrets, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... quick to perceive, as was his will to act, or his hand to do. He saw at once through all sham and artifice. He could be almost said to perceive what was passing through one's mind, so quick was his discernment, so penetrating his thought. He might have been a Jesuit, nor fallen a whit behind the most polished and profound of ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... N. taste; good taste, refined taste, cultivated taste; delicacy, refinement, fine feeling, gust, gusto, tact, finesse; nicety &c (discrimination) 465; to prepon [Gr.]; polish, elegance, grace. judgment, discernment &c 465. dilettantism, dilettanteism; virtu; fine art; culture, cultivation. [Science of taste] aesthetics. man of taste &c; connoisseur, judge, critic, conoscente, virtuoso, amateur, dilettante, Aristarchus^, Corinthian, arbiter ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... coldness with which he met this prospect of refuge against the forlorn condition in which he had just before confessed they were placed, that she was much more disposed to ponder on the cause, than to trouble him with questions which she had the discernment to see would be useless. Gertrude wondered, while she was disposed to think he might be right, though she knew not why. Cassandra alone was rebellious. She lifted her voice in loud objections against a moment's delay, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... It is more profound, more deeply spiritual than the pilgrimage from Destruction to the Celestial City; and to understand its hidden meaning, requires the close and mature application of the renewed mind. There are, alas! comparatively few that are blessed with spiritual discernment; and even of these, there are but few inclined to mental investigation and research. These are reasons why it has not been so popular a book as the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' To aid those whose time for ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... obtained for the company, by the spirited and gallant conduct of the two English commanders. They had, however, too much discernment to rely on the promises of a barbarian, who had so prefidiously broken former engagements; but they prudently dissembled their sentiments, until they had thoroughly reinstated the affairs of the company, and reduced the French power ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... claim to the same spirit of discernment, tho' his title to that claim might be questionable on another ground. He is readily led into a conclusion that Mr. Wilkins must have visited the Northern towns to procure Mr. Cowen's nomination; when ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector

... horizontal trimmings apparently decrease the height, and that vertical lines add to it, those who desire to appear at their best will use discernment in dividing their basques with yokes, or corsage mountings at the bust-line or frills ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley

... Kelley, of Pennsylvania, and Calvin T. Hurlburd, of New York. As chairman of the committee on the Library of the United States, to employ the language of its accomplished librarian, he had "a clear discernment and quick apprehension of all things that needed to be done;" he "threw his influence in favor of the most ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... of an encephalic organization. Figs. 72 and 79 fairly indicate the effects of undue mental activity, the intellect causing vital expenditure resulting in the devitalization of the blood. While the intellect displays keen penetration, subtle discrimination, and profound discernment, the emotions exhibit intense sensitiveness, acute susceptibility, and inspirational impressibility. The encephalic temperament is characterized by mental activity, great delicacy of organization, a high and broad forehead, expressive eyes, fine but not very ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... circumstances will oblige them, and which is perhaps preferable to all the show of public life. It has always been my inclination. Lady Stafford (who knew me better than anybody else in the world, both from her own just discernment, and my heart being ever as open to her as myself) used to tell me, my true vocation was a monastery; and I now find, by experience, more sincere pleasure with my books and garden, than all the flutter of ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... another variation of the story. The amount of it is, that, while the mate thought assistance needed, and went to get it, Burroughs concluded to do the work himself. If the Prisoner had been allowed Counsel; or any discernment been left in the Judges, the whole of this evidence would have been thrown out of account, as without foundation and frivolous in its character; yet Increase Mather, who was present, was entirely carried away with it, and declared that, upon it alone, if ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... a stern true-born Englishman, and fully prejudiced against all other nations, he had discernment enough to see, and candour enough to censure, the cold reserve too common among Englishmen towards strangers. 'Sir,' said he, (Johnson) 'two men of any other nation who are shown into a room together, at a house ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... princes, out of modesty and respect, would not take the liberty of beginning any conversation. Therefore, to give them an opportunity, he furnished them with subjects all dinner-time. But whatever subject he introduced, they shewed so much wit, judgment, and discernment, that he was struck with admiration. "Were these my own children," said he to himself, "and I had improved their talents by suitable education, they could not have been more accomplished or better informed." In short, ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... inevitable. The constable was led by the unsuspicious Hall to the bar of the Three Hens, but the mysterious stranger had gone and left no trace. Poor, humble, with nothing but his good character to rely on, Mr. Hall now cast himself with confidence on the discernment ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward

... octaves the beats serve him so faithfully, his musical qualifications being brought into requisition only as a rough guide in determining pitch of the various intervals. To tune by the beats requires a sharp ear and mental discernment; to tune by pitch requires a fine musical ear and knowledge of the ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer

... that utter destruction? Why were they scattered over the face of the earth, their titles abolished, their escutcheons defaced, their parks wasted, their palaces dismantled, their heritage given to strangers? Because they had no sympathy with the people, no discernment of the signs of their time; because, in the pride and narrowness of their hearts, they called those whose warnings might have saved them theorists and speculators; because they refused all concession till the time had arrived when no concession would avail. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... said!—what, indeed, no one of discernment could help saying, thought Allerdyke. The sole knowledge, of course, was with Fullaway and his lady clerk—so far as ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher

... misfortunes demand respect. If my friend Mr. Johnson had made the proposal, I should have been severely hurt, have thought him unkind and unfeeling, but not impertinent. The privilege of intimacy you had no claim to, and should have referred the man to myself, if you had not sufficient discernment to quash it at once. I am, sir, poor and destitute; yet I have a spirit that will never bend, or take indirect methods to obtain the consequences I despise; nay, if to support life it was necessary to act contrary to my principles, the struggle ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... talk, it was mostly ironical, not to the extreme of satire, but tempered to an agreeable coolness even for the things he admired. He did not apparently care to hear himself praised, but he could very accurately and perfectly mark his discernment of excellence in others. He was at times a keen observer of nature and again not, apparently. Something was said before him and Lowell of the beauty of his description of a rabbit, startled with fear among the ferns, and lifting its head ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... method of argument is one in which we shall feel ourselves more at home, inasmuch as it is not so much a question of scholarship, but ordinary intelligent discernment. Time and space forbid that I attempt here a full or detailed exhibit of the sentences, thoughts, ideas in the book itself which are taken as being quite impossible to King Solomon. I will, however, attempt to give a representative few that may stand ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings

... fulness of accomplished nationhood, and is grey in honour, Reade's nervous English, which may by that time have grown quaint, and only legible to learned eves, will preserve; the history of its beginnings. That part of His work, indeed, is purely and wholly epic in sentiment and discernment, however colloquial in form, and it is the sole example of its kind, since it was written by one who was contemporary ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray

... keen and worldly wit Is good for worldly uses, not to tilt Withal at holy men and holy things. He pleases well the spiritual sense Of my most peerless lady, whose discernment Is still the touchstone of my grosser fancy: He is her friend, and mine: and you must love him Even for our sakes alone, [to a bystander] A word with ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... said little. Jasper Penny instinctively excluded her from a trivial conversation. She was, he decided, paler than usual, the shadows under her eyes were indigo. He was filled with self-condemnation. Mrs. Penny, gazing at her with a beady discernment, asked if her rest had been interrupted. "I am always an indifferent sleeper," Susan Brundon replied evasively. He followed her into the carriage that was to take her to the station at Jaffa; and, ignoring her slight gasp of protest, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... first rude experience with outlaws, was not without both discernment and intuition. Perhaps the maid Rosita had lied to her, carried away by a natural relish in telling all that she knew and more. A look of brightening hope surged up in Betty's gray eyes; her pretty lips were parting when a rude interruption made her forget to say the words ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory

... sheltering inn. Traceable in a long line of our most cherished writers, from Chaucer and Lithgow and Nash, Defoe and Fielding, and Hazlitt and Holcroft, the fascination of the road that these writers have tried to communicate, has never perhaps been expressed with a nicer discernment than in the Confessions of Rousseau, that inveterate pedestrian who walked Europe to the rhythm of ideas as epoch-making as any that have ever emanated from the mind ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... testimony. And the various parties, pointing out reciprocally to each other, the contradictions, improbabilities, and forgeries, accused one another of having established their belief on popular rumors, vague traditions, and absurd fables, invented without discernment, and admitted without examination by unknown, partial, or ignorant writers, at ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... faithful girl; and others younger, but developing in character and trustworthiness. All these young converts need much care, but the care of genuine converts is very fruitful work; and one interesting part of it is the fitting of each to her niche, or of fitting the niche to her. Discernment of spirit is needed for this, for misfits means waste energy and great discomfort; and energy is too good a thing to waste, and comfort too pleasant a thing to spoil. So those who are responsible for this part of the work would ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... most gallant husband and a gentleman! And so, forsooth, you would desert your wife because she has forgotten the memory of her dead boy—whom she never truly loved—and because she thirsts after pleasure and excitement! What wondrous discernment! What a wise judge of human nature!" Her ironical laugh was now true ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith

... senarmigi. Disarray konfuzego. Disarrange malordigi. Disaster malfelicxego. Disastrous ruiniga. Disavow malkonfesi. Disband disigi. Disbelieve malkredi. Disburse elspezi. Disbursement elspezo. Disc disko. Discard forigi, forjxeti. Discern distingi. Discernment sagaceco. Discharge eligi. Discharge (dismiss) eksigi. Discharge (a debt) elpagi. Disciple aligxanto. Discipline disciplino. Disclaim malkonfesi. Disclose malkasxi. Discolour senkolorigi. Discomfit malvenkigi. Discompose ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... beginning to feel that this was his true successor, and not the blackguards that were breaking his heart! The two were a pair of friends: on the one side were sedulous care and swift obedience by night and by day; on the other were affection and a discernment of coming greatness, made the clearer by the bitter contrast with his own children's lives. The old and the young are good companions for one another, and often understand each other better and help each other more ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... before whom even the Baron was awed; and he had much talk with Christopher, who opened his heart to him. The Abbot found that he could read, and knew the stories of the saints and the answers of the Mass, and had discernment of good and evil. So the Abbot sought out the Baron, and told him that Christopher would make a very wise priest, and that he was apt to be ruled, and therefore, said he, he will be apt to rule; and he added that he thought ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... widely diverged. When there she carefully sought, and having found, industriously pursued the trail of her old suitor, M. Pelet. She soon overtook him. What arts she employed to soothe and blind him I know not, but she succeeded both in allaying his wrath, and hoodwinking his discernment, as was soon proved by the alteration in his mien and manner; she must have managed to convince him that I neither was, nor ever had been, a rival of his, for the fortnight of fury against me terminated in a fit of exceeding graciousness and ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... well have tempted to a mere piling of squalor upon squalor. A fine discretion has given a noble dignity to a record through which shines the unquenchable human spirit. One passage, full of affectionate discernment about London, will cause a flicker of just pride in everyone who is authentic Cockney, whether by birth or adoption. A big book of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various

... corridor, and one after another the boys came up, shook hands with him, and bade him good-night. Westby came to him with the engaging and yet somewhat disquieting smile which recalled to Irving Mr. Wythe's words, "He smiles and smiles, but is a villain still." It was a smile which seemed to suggest the discernment and enjoyment of all one's ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier

... theory of practice. But of what possible intellectual formula could this mystic Cornelius be the sensible exponent; seeming, as he did, to live ever in close relationship with, and recognition of, a mental view, a source of discernment, a light upon his way, which had certainly not yet sprung up for Marius? Meantime, the discretion of Cornelius, his energetic clearness and purity, were a charm, rather physical than moral: his exquisite correctness of spirit, at all events, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... neither instructs nor provides the Army with officers for staff duties; and of course the difficulty now to obtain efficient officers for a staff, if not insurmountable, is appalling, and is only to be mastered by a great deal of good will, by insight and by discernment. ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... when, choosing out of many heresies, I think over in my mind certain portentous errors of self-opinionated men, errors that it will be incumbent on me to refute, I should condemn myself of want of spirit and discernment if in this trial of strength I were to be afraid of any man's ability or powers. Let him be able, let him be eloquent, let him be a practised disputant, let him be a devourer of all books, still his thought must dry up and his utterance fail ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion

... heat. He soon grew to know me, and would actually come at my call from the farthest end of the trough. He was very shy of others, and I was not sorry, for I wanted all his affection, and was proud of his discernment. This was thought so singular that I was often sent out with visitors, to show off my pet. I don't believe that the keeper of the hippopotamus can be prouder of his mud-loving monster than I was of my lively ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood

... touching matters that come not within the discerning of sense. Now in regard to this bread, the Papists do overreach themselves. Did they but tell us that the change made was mystical and of faith,—not within the discernment of sense—we might then find it harder work to deal withal, and we must seek unto the Word of God only, and not unto our sense in any wise. But they go farther: they tell us the change is such, that there is no more the substance of bread ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt

... not only with the artist's desire to satisfy the connoisseur, no, but with stormy passion—she felt it now; yet, though the god of love was called a blind boy, she had retained the full, clear strength of vision and the absolute power of discernment. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... tribulation," and "her children," or disciples, he would kill with death, or deadly pestilence. Thus would this whole corrupt party be visited with divine judgments according to their works; while their great pretensions to wisdom and discernment, "as they speak," or as they term it, will be shown to be nothing but the "depths ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... behind her, and strolled back towards the fireplace. "A woman of great discernment is your aunt, Joan." He turned towards her, and suddenly stood very still. "What is it, my dear? . . . ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... a grain of discernment or a proper estimate of her dignity, she would have seen that this was part of a well-defined policy of striking a blow through her at the man she professed to love still, even with a greater passion now that he was the victim of combined and unrelenting hostility. Hortense, ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... calculation to enter his mind at the time. I may mention here, a woman observed when I visited the Maraboutess, (addressing me), "You must send the medicine, for a Christian mou yakidtheb (never lies)." It is a pity that these people, who have discernment enough to see at times the moral superiority of Christians, should not look a little below the surface and inquire into its cause. Not, however, that all Europeans, (or myself,) deserve these high compliments of gratitude ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... one may say, had completed his apprenticeship to the sea; and in his blue shirt loosely knotted round the throat, his leather belt and canvas trousers, he had such a look of smartness and energy that it required no very great amount of discernment to perceive in him a sailor from top to toe. He had, sooner than most, risen superior to the dangers and temptations to which young sailor lads are exposed during the years of their novitiate, and with a break-neck recklessness of disposition he combined such a perfectly cat-like ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie

... edifice of his faith, to lull his conscience and quiet remorse, to excuse his weaknesses and break through every restraint, and thus to warrant every kind of fault and vice. Hence it is that the knowledge and discernment of what is true or untrue, in the moral world, depends, in a considerable degree, upon the practice of good or evil; hence it is, that the judgments of the mind are modified by the inclinations of the heart, and that virtue opens the way ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio

... life all the friends he ever had, and he made the wrath of his enemies to praise him. This was not by cunning or intrigue in the low acceptation of the term, but by far-seeing reason and discernment. He always told only enough of his plans and purposes to induce the belief that he had communicated all; yet he reserved ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... man of keen discernment, quick apprehensions, and ready retort. In social intercourse he had wonderful powers of adapting himself to circumstances, and was alike an acceptable visitor in the families of the wealthy and refined, ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut

... supposed military profession; his hectoring passed for courage, and his sauciness for wit. Lest, however, any one should think this a violation of probability, we must add, in fairness to the two ladies, that their discernment was greatly blinded, and their favour propitiated, by the opportune arrival of Captain Craigengelt in the moment when they were longing for a third hand to make a party at tredrille, in which, as in all games, whether of chance ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... I tell you so?' exclaimed he; 'did I not say that you were a man of ingenuity? Acknowledge, then, that I am not without penetration; own, that it requires a sharp discernment to discover at once where abilities lie; and that had it not been for me, we should never have discovered this katib, who is to tell us everything, and thus fulfil the instructions of ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... finished my service. There, on his own ground, so to speak, it seemed easier to pray for the Patron with a sanguine heart, and to give thanks for him with a clear conscience. Over our breakfast we sat on and talked, and looked about us. Edgar seemed to me to be growing in discernment. Once he had seemed so provocatively cock-sure about his mighty patron. To pray for him as we had prayed that morning in the language of a race he had contemned might have sounded to him in years past mere clerical impertinence. ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

... God, that you are able to judge what God should be? Through Christ, in very deed, have we won to know God; but that is by reason of the knowledge and authority of Him that revealed Him, not by the clear discernment and just judgment of us that received that revelation.' I do tell thee, Lettice—what with this man o' the one side with his philosophical follies, and Parson Turnham on the other, with his heathenish fooleries, I am at times well-nigh ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... gentlemen; and, on the other hand, there are gentlemen of rank who seem industrious to appear mean and degenerate; the one sort raise themselves either by ambition or virtue, while the other abase themselves by viciousness or sloth; so that we must avail ourselves of our understanding and discernment in distinguishing those persons, who, though they bear the same appellation, are yet so different in point of character. All the genealogies in the world may be reduced to four kinds. The first are those families who from a low beginning have raised and extended themselves, until they ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... The natural discernment of the Italian masses enlightened them as to the magnitude of Cavour's part in the play, even in the hour when the interest seemed transferred to the battlefield, and when an emperor and a king moved among them as liberators. At Milan, after the ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... into characters and designs, and that nice discernment of human passions and practices, which have raised you to your present height of station and dignity of employment, have long shown you that dedicatory addresses are written for the sake of the author ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... her steep her hair in weird syrops; Poor weak palsy-stricken churchyard thing; Shut her pure sorrow-drops with glad exclaim—such lines were to him a constant and exhilarating excitement. In the very simplicity and unsophistication of his approach to the poet was a virgin naivete of discernment that an Edinburgh Reviewer would rarely attain. Here, he dimly felt, was ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... place of the almost too bold gallant who had been mine; and lo! when he suddenly comes on me with all his pristine assurance and seeming contempt for the weepful things I mentioned above, I don't like it at all. I feel as if two men in the same mask are courting me, and I without discernment enough to tell one from ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... instance of our discovery, found the slightest resemblance between mesmerism and metaphysics. No especial idiosyncrasy is requisite to acquire a knowledge of metaphysical healing; spiritual sense is more important to its discernment than the intellect; and those who would learn this science without a high moral standard of thought and action, will fail to understand it until they go up higher. Owing to our explanations constantly vibrating between the same points, an irksome repetition of words must occur; also the use ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Napoleon. More securely to deceive and seduce him, he loaded him in his reports with protestations of attachment and fidelity; and he took care to contrive occasions of adding marginal notes with his own hand, in which he adroitly displayed in a distinguished manner his devotion, discernment, and activity. All his reports in general bore the same stamp: with much of cunning, and much of talent, they offered to the eye a rare and valuable assemblage of quickness and judgment, of moderation and firmness: at every word you might discover the able minister, the profound ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... be considered equal to one statesman. The result justified the selections of the committee, and although the Senator was not present, the seven Commoners of Science made the occasion a most notable one by the flow of wit, elegance of phrase, solidity and cogency of argument, and rare discernment of natural truths, with which ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett

... it with a natural outburst of his leading quality. In truth no previous act or word of Baumgartner's had inspired such confidence as this unerring piece of insight. It seemed to the boy a perfect miracle of discernment. He was not old enough to know that what he would have done, in his weakness, most grown-up men and women of his temperament would ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... huckster, is a true representative of the influence and ideas of New England? Or that the present Copperhead Democracy of that section is the real exponent of the genuine spirit of the Puritan Democracy? Certainly not. They are shrewd men, of great discernment, and in their way brave and chivalrous, and I verily do not wonder if they would not have these renegade Yankees even as slaves. No! the actual cause of their hatred is the silent, all-pervading ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... face. Skin eruptions due to unwise feeding, or parasites due to uncleanliness, are quickly destructive to the silky coat, and constant watchfulness is necessary to protect the dog from all occasion for scratching. The diet is an important consideration always, and a nice discernment is imperative in balancing the proportions of meat and vegetable. Too much meat is prone to heat the blood, while too little induces eczema. Scraps of bread and green vegetables well mixed with gravy and finely-minced lean meat form the best dietary for ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... talents, though deaf and dumb, who had been to a Deaf and Dumb Institution to be taught, with a view to become the master of a similar Institution in Russia, was asked the difference between intelligence and discernment? He said "Intelligence is a faculty, by which we distinguish good and evil, what is useful and what hurtful. I think discernment is the faculty of distinguishing the greater and less degrees ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe

... him out of creation. He should be put down,—as you would put down a tiger or a rattlesnake, if found at liberty somewhere in the Midland Counties. A more hateful character, to all who possess a grain of moral discernment, could not even be imagined. And it need not be shown that the conception of such a character is worthy only of a baby. However many years the man who deliberately and admiringly delineates such a person may have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... just now, he says, for admiring our older poets, not because they are good, but because they are old. The origin and development of Roman poetry made it certain that perfection must come late. He assumes that Augustus champions the moderns, and compliments him on the discernment which preferred a Virgil and a Varius (and so, by implication, a Horace) to the Plautuses and Terences ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... me.[208] The fruits, however, of those persons endued with little intelligence are perishable. They that worship the divinities, go to the divinities, (while) they that worship me come even to me.[209] They that have no discernment, regard me who am (really) unmanifest to have become manifest, because they do not know the transcendent and undecaying state of mine than which there is nothing higher.[210] Shrouded by the illusion of my inconceivable power, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... said nothing in reply, and afterwards the old man, who was not without discernment, respected his son's mood and was silent in turn; while Frank fed his memory with his imagination, and by their joint aid ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... phantom; limited, controled, superseded, and nullified, at the will of another. Is this the constitution which so charmed our ancestors, that, as your Excellency has informed us, they kept a day of solemn thanksgiving to Almighty God when they received it? And were they men of so little discernment, such children in understanding, as to please themselves with the imagination, that they were blessed with the same rights and liberties which natural born subjects in England enjoyed, when, at ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... dull and undiscerning bauble! For so it argues thee, that thou could'st leave The slender fingers of her hand, to sink Beneath the waters. Yet what marvel is it That thou should'st lack discernment? let me rather Heap curses on myself, who, though endowed With reason, yet rejected ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa

... baboon, or any other monster which has sensation, is a measure of all things; then while we were reverencing him as a god he might have produced a magnificent effect by expounding to us that he was no wiser than a tadpole. For if truth is only sensation, and one man's discernment is as good as another's, and every man is his own judge, and everything that he judges is right and true, then {90} what need of Protagoras to be our instructor at a high figure; and why should we be less knowing ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall

... the old man's words had not been vague. And as to those hang-dog looks,—her lover had told her that she should not allow a man's countenance to go so far in evidence as that! In so judging she would trust much too far to her own power of discernment. She would not contradict him, but she felt sure of her discernment in that respect. She did not in the least doubt the truth of the evidence conveyed by ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... analyzed with ability and finish.... This is a story to be admired for its discernment and ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... Woggle-Bug, "I take you for a gentleman of judgment and discernment. Does it not occur to you that I am several thousand times greater than any Woggle-Bug you ever saw before? Therefore it is plainly evident that I am Highly Magnified, and there is no good reason why ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... there was no necessity, his requirements being always reasonable and only such as she was fully capable of meeting. She had a good mind, quick discernment and retentive memory, and she was quite resolved to be industrious and to keep her promise to her father to be a good girl in every way. Also her ambition was aroused to attempt to overtake her ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley

... love, they sacrifice their personal feelings to their passion; they rise but so much the higher for all the pettiness overcome in their nature, and become sublime. Then Eugene was struck by the profound discernment and insight displayed by this woman in judging of natural affection, when a privileged affection had separated and set her at a distance apart. Mme. de Nucingen was piqued by ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... Audley's discernment, it may be asked, place two young persons in such a situation, and doubt the consequences? Those who are no longer young are liable to forget that love is a plant of early growth, and that the individuals that they have but a short time before beheld ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... politeness; he laid in a provision of formulas, and made lavish use of his stock of the catch-words coined at need in Paris to give fools the small change for the ore of great ideas and events. Among men of the world he was reputed a man of taste and discernment; and as a bigoted upholder of aristocratic opinions he was held up for a noble character. If by chance he slipped now and again into his old light-heartedness or levity, others were ready to discover an undercurrent of diplomatic intention beneath his ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... approved his discernment. But all she said was, with her cool lack of stress, 'It's ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay

... Judges stood astonish'd at the Profundity of Zadig's nice Discernment. The News was soon carried to the King and the Queen. Zadig was not only the whole Subject of the Court's Conversation; but his Name was mention'd with the utmost Veneration in the King's Chambers, and his Privy-Council. And notwithstanding several of their ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire

... take to be that the King is the cause of the whole thing. With that wonderful sagacity which renders him the ablest man in France, and enables him sooner or later to carry all his points, and that tact and discernment with which he knows when to yield and when to stand, he allowed Thiers to have his fall swing; and to commit himself with the nation, the King himself all the time consenting to put the country in a formidable attitude, but making no secret of his desire for peace; and then at the decisive ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... wisdom of Solomon was never more clearly demonstrated than when he said: "Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it." It is a piece of world philosophy which has reigned unquestioned throughout the ages—a policy upon which human discernment, in Church and State, has relied with unfailing effect; "for the thoughts of a child are long, long thoughts"—those well-remembered words, how true; for those "long thoughts"—the mental environment of the formative period of child-life—do inevitably determine the future ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... her. Lee, in addressing the jury, did not fail to insist with great warmth on the "abominable cruelty" which had been exercised towards "the highly attractive and modest girl who trusted her cause to their discernment"; and did not sit down until he had succeeded in working upon their feelings with great and, as he thought, successful effect. The counsel on the other side, however, speedily broke the spell with which Lee had enchanted the jury, by observing that ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... the line and leave no gaps. Remember, too, what I have already told: Remind them of it now. They must not pause For signallings from me amid a strife Whose chaos may prevent my clear discernment, Or may forbid my signalling at all. The voice of honour then becomes the chief's; Listen they thereto, and set every stitch To heave them on into the fiercest fight. Now I will sum up all: heed well the charge; EACH CAPTAIN, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... impossible to measure adequately the consequences of sexual indulgence. It is destructive of physical health among women and of morals among both sexes. It results in a weakening of the will and a blunting of moral discernment. It is an economic waste, as is intemperance, for even on the level of economic values it is plain that money could be much better spent for that which would benefit rather than curse. But the great evil that looms large in public view is the legacy ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... to be applied and accounted for by the President of the United States, intended as part of the price, was considered as conveying the sanction of Congress to the acquisition proposed. The enlightened Government of France saw with just discernment the importance to both nations of such liberal arrangements as might best and permanently promote the peace, friendship, and interests of both, and the property and sovereignty of all Louisiana which had been restored to them have on certain conditions ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson

... believe that this is not merely a suggestive analogy, but really true as a tendency, not only with regard to man's gains by the conquest of electricity, but also with respect to every other signal victory which has brought him to his present pinnacle of discernment and rule. If this permutative principle in former advances lay undetected, it stands forth clearly in that latest accession to skill and interpretation which has been ushered in by Franklin ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... plains, in his songs he was as simple, as manly, as tender as Robert Burns." In Brahms's songs we cannot say which is the most significant factor: the words, the vocal part or the accompaniment; all go together to make up a perfect whole. Brahms had discernment in the selection of texts suited to inspire poetic creation. His melodies are always appropriate to the spirit of the words, yet truly lyric and singable, and the accompaniment catches and intensifies every ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... will make a point of keeping it fixed upon himself and what immediately concerns him; and by this plan you will find him capable of perception, memory, and even reasoning; this is the order of nature.[16] In proportion as a creature endowed with sensation becomes active, it acquires discernment suited to its powers, and the surplus of strength needed to preserve it is absolutely necessary in developing that speculative faculty which uses the same surplus for other ends. If, then, you mean to cultivate your pupil's understanding, cultivate the strength it ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... way to Sherton Abbas without elation and without discomposure. Had he regarded his inner self spectacularly, as lovers are now daily more wont to do, he might have felt pride in the discernment of a somewhat rare power in him—that of keeping not only judgment but emotion suspended in difficult cases. But he noted it not. Neither did he observe what was also the fact, that though he cherished a true and warm feeling towards ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... scientific observers Professor Hare is far the most noted for his critical discernment, his accuracy of observation, and his obstinate determination not to be convinced that there was anything occult in these phenomena. He was remarkably skilful in the making of scientific apparatus, and he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... what it is, Jack," said the latter, impressively; "I don't pretend to have more gumption (qu. discernment?) than my messmates; but I can see through a millstone as clear as any man as ever heaved a lead in these here lakes; and may I never pipe boatswain's whistle again, if you 'ar'n't, some how or other, in the wrong box. That 'ere Ingian's one ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... enthralled, applauded. Beyond, on the Rhine, a city which is today Cologne, rose in honor of her sovereignty. To her wishes the senate was subservient, to her indiscretions blind. Claud, who meanwhile had been wholly sightless, suddenly showed signs of discernment. A woman, charged with illicit commerce, was brought to his tribunal. He condemned her, of course. "In my case," he explained, "matrimony has not been successful, but the fate that destined me to ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... tastes, had chosen a soft, creamy stuff which he informed Mattie must be trimmed with no end of lace. Phillis had received and executed the order with such skill and discernment that a most ravishing costume had been produced. But Grace, who had her own ideas on the subject of those "Challoner girls," had received the gift somewhat coldly, and had even seemed displeased when her father pinched her ear and told her that Archie's ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... Herschel of Germany. He did not, it is true, possess the more brilliant gifts of his rival. Herschel's piercing discernment, comprehensive intelligence, and inventive splendour were wanting to him. He was, nevertheless, the founder of descriptive astronomy in Germany, as Herschel was ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... what I did, and stood gazing out over the sunlit garden. In build and appearance, Tuppy somewhat resembles a bulldog, and his aspect now was that of one of these fine animals who has just been refused a slice of cake. It was not difficult for a man of my discernment to read what was in his mind, and it occasioned me no surprise, therefore, when his next words had to do with the subject marked with a ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... considerable degree of culture, an equally whole-hearted, intelligent appreciation of Wagner's music presupposes a much wider range of sympathy, a much more extended view of the capabilities of musical expression, a much keener discernment, and a much profounder susceptibility to the effects of harmonic progressions? And is the conclusion not inevitable, therefore, that on the whole the ready acceptance of Wagner's music by a people is evidence that they are not sufficiently cultured to feel the force of that conservatism ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel









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