"Undiscerning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rightly name thee; 50 We enslave, but cannot tame thee; With fierce snatches, now and then, Thou pluckest at thy right again, And thy down-trod instincts savage To stealthy insurrection creep While thy wittol masters sleep, And burst in undiscerning ravage: Then how thou shak'st thy bacchant locks! While brazen pulses, far and near, Throb thick and thicker, wild with fear 60 And dread conjecture, till the drear Disordered clangor every ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... his swiftness in action and the devastating severity of all his attacks, served to win for him the submissive respect of almost every dog he met. Occasionally, and upon a first meeting, some careless, undiscerning dog would overlook these qualities. The same dog never made the ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... youth, and narrative old age. Their pleas were diff'rent, their request the same: For good and bad alike are fond of Fame. Some she disgraced, and some with honours crowned; Unlike successes equal merits found. Thus her blind sister, fickle Fortune, reigns, And, undiscerning, scatters crowns and chains. First at the shrine the Learned world appear, And to the Goddess thus prefer their pray'r: "Long have we sought t' instruct and please mankind, With studies pale, with midnight vigils blind; ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... doubt, the monopoly of the great commerce of America naturally seems to be an acquisition of the highest value. To the undiscerning eye of giddy ambition it naturally presents itself, amidst the confused scramble of politics and war, as a very dazzling object to fight for. The dazzling splendour of the object, however, the immense greatness ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... to see "the mare," and I longed for the free sunlit world of which she was a part, as for a tonic. But this was, of course, impossible. So long as hard undiscerning materialism ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... that the Chinese as a nation are not more addicted to thieving than the inhabitants of many countries for whom the same excuses are by no means so available. That no undiscerning persons may be led to regard us as panegyrists of a stationary civilisation, we hasten to counterbalance our somewhat laudatory statements by the enunciation of another proposition less startling, but ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... wooden image of Christ is not one whit less idolatrous than the Buddhist who worships a bronze statue of Amida Butzu. All that the common people are capable of seeing is the soul-envelope, for the soul itself they are unable to appreciate. Spiritually they are undiscerning, because imaginatively they ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... who was born in Lisbon. All dusty with the road, like any beggar you see, and not much better clad, foot-sore and begging bread for himself and the boy. And because of his white hair, and because he carried himself in that absurd way that makes the undiscerning cry, 'Ah, my lord king in disguise!' the porter must have him in, and by and by comes the prior and stands to talk with him, 'From where?' 'From Cordova.' 'Whither?' 'To Portugal.' 'For why?' 'To speak again with King John!' 'Are ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... objection was that the action was 'premature'—my own feeling being that of shame for having vainly waited so long in deference to political complications, and that shame was intolerably increasing ... It is undiscerning not to see that at a critical moment of extreme tension they [the German Professors] allowed their passion to get the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... who, having escaped to the Union army, had been pursued and returned again to bondage. Yet hope survived all these disasters which gathered around the fate of their unfortunate brethren, who were remanded to slavery through the undiscerning folly of those who were strengthening the hands which were dealing their deadliest blows at the heart of the Nation. But slavery had cast such a glamour over the Nation, and so warped the consciences of men, that they failed ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... the tablecloth she was folding and looked earnestly at the other woman. To an undiscerning eye the latter would have looked much as she always did—plump and matronly, with brown hair drawn back from the forehead and parted in the middle; keen brown eyes with a humorous twinkle in them—this was the Keziah Coffin the later generation of ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sick-headaches, and that it was a very unfortunate thing for her, because he didn't enjoy going into company with her, and it seemed odd to go so much alone, when they were just married. Augustine was glad in his heart that he had married so undiscerning a woman; but as the glosses and civilities of the honeymoon wore away, he discovered that a beautiful young woman, who has lived all her life to be caressed and waited on, might prove quite a hard mistress in domestic life. ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... probable,' proceeds the bishop, 'that the price at which Judas sold his lord was thirty pounds weight of silver [that is, about ninety guineas sterling in English money]—a goodly price for the Saviour of the world to be prized at by his undiscerning and unworthy countrymen.' Where, however, the learned writer makes a slight oversight in logic, since it was not precisely Christ that was so valued—this prisoner as against the certain loss of this prisoner—but ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... we take this nation! Almost as seriously as we take ourselves. The reason is that most of us come to Italy too undiscerning, too reverent; in the pre-critical and pre-humorous stages. We arrive here, stuffed with Renaissance ideals or classical lore, and viewing the present through coloured spectacles. We arrive here, above all things, too young; for youth loves to lean on tradition and to draw inspiration from what ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... beauteous, Nature, is thy face,' Exclaim'd Orlando: 'all that grows has grace: All are appropriate—bog, and marsh, and fen, Are only poor to undiscerning men; Here may the nice and curious eye explore How Nature's hand adorns the rushy moor, Here the rare moss in secret shade is found, Here the sweet myrtle of the shaking ground; Beauties are these that from the view retire, But well repay th' attention they require; ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... of transportation,' and to show the futility of a prison system loosely planned at one end of the world and roughly executed at the other by men who found it easier, and in some cases more agreeable, to their undiscerning hearts ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... who protested, 'Wait till your 12,000 join, and you have your provisions,' was the orthodox plan, and might have much to say for itself. But the two plans collapsing into one,—that was the clearly fatal method! Magnanimous Stair never made the least explanation, to an undiscerning Public or Parliament; wrapt himself in strict silence, and accepted in a grand way what had come to him. [His Papers, to voluminous extent, are still in the Family Archives;—not inaccessible, I think, were the right student of them (who would be a rare article among us!) to turn ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... still strong in her heart. Her pure and fine-wrought beauty, so subtle in expression of the soul's life, touched him with a sense of deepest pathos. It revolted him to think of her in connection with those brutalities of the newspaper; he had a movement of rebellion against the undiscerning rigour of social rule. Disinterested absolutely, but he averted his face lest she should have a ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... philosophers, pursued the characteristic feminine course of clinging to the subject on which she was informed. The undiscerning have called this habit of mind irrelevant, but wrongly. The feminine intellect leaps like a grasshopper; the masculine ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... unseen world; he accustoms himself to speak and act as in the presence of "an innumerable company of angels, and of the spirits of just men made perfect, and of God the Judge of all;" the consciousness of their approbation cheers and gladdens his soul, under the scoffs and reproaches of an undiscerning world, and to his delighted ear, their united praises form a harmony which a few discordant ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... tastes and judgment still unfixed, yet he probably has a conscience in the matter, and would not have been selected for that work had he not shown some aptitude for it. Though he may be not the best possible guide to the undiscerning, he will be better than no guide at all. Real substantial criticism must, from its nature, be costly, and that which the public wants should at any rate be cheap. Advice is given to many thousands, which, though it may not be the best advice ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... oyster-forks without the knowledge of the donor would be a violation of the highest code of ethics. Presents, presents, nothing but presents, of every kind and degree, from the solid silver tea-set of exquisitely fluted pattern to the excruciatingly ugly bit of bric-a-brac which has captivated the undiscerning eye of some dear friend. After every ring at the door-bell appears the maid with a fresh parcel wrapped in snow-white paper fastened with a dainty ribbon, and on each occasion my dear Josie's eyes sparkle more excitedly ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... she used to accomplish her purpose were the most effectual she could have contrived to defeat it. Such is man, that his pride revolts from all attempts to influence his affections. The weak and the undiscerning, indeed, are often led to "choose love by another's eyes;" but the lofty and independent spirit loves to create for itself those feelings which lose half their charms when their source is not in the depths of ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... conscience of the sinner blind the eyes of the onlookers. People are sentimental; and bastinado wrongdoing not according to its harmfulness, but according to the infamy that has come to attach to it. Undiscerning, they chastise with scorpions the old authentic sins, but spare the new. They do not see that blackmail is piracy, that embezzlement is theft, that speculation is gambling that deleterious adulteration is murder. The cloven hoof hides in ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... Red Canyon Trail is made enjoyable by the brilliant colorings, the faultings and nonconformities of the strata, which are apparent even to the most undiscerning layman. Here the conglomerate appears above the blue limestone, while ordinarily it is found below it. The Algonkian also is largely in evidence. Across the river one may see the location of ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... pursuits; and thus it is that the craving to discover general laws in everything, to include a great number of objects under the same formula, and to explain a mass of facts by a single cause, becomes an ardent, and sometimes an undiscerning, passion ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville |
