"Discernment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... went all through me when I read his small effusion. To be judged by such a one revolted me. I ought, however, to have controlled myself, and I did not. I am willing to be judged by the Examiner—I like the Examiner. Fonblanque has power, he has discernment—I bend to his censorship, I am grateful for his praise; his blame deserves consideration; when he approves, I permit myself a moderate emotion of pride. Am I wrong in supposing that critique to be written by Mr. Fonblanque? But whether it is by him ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Constantine, he had opportunities of coming into personal contact with persons of distinction from all countries, who must have been well acquainted with the traditions of their respective Churches; and that he was a man of rare prudence, intelligence, and discernment. He was certainly not a philosophical historian, and in his great work he has omitted to notice many things of much moment; but it must be conceded that, generally speaking, he is an accurate recorder of facts; ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... a merciful thing for me that the whole company fell into a burst of laughter and applauded Filippo's quick discernment, which they never doubted. All talked at once, and a hundred proofs were advanced in support of Filippo's opinion. The Lord Giovanni's celebrated dullness of mind, amounting almost to stupidity, was cited, and they reminded one another of ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... Wonderful discernment of the ethical prophet! We cease to see God omnipresent in all things, and our blindness ends in our destruction. We see the sensual allurement, but not the sensual hurt; we see the mermaid's head, but not the dragon's tail; we think we see our way to cut off that which we ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... 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 could mistake it. ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... indeed, unlikely that Savage might, by his imprudence, expose himself to the malice of a talebearer; for his patron had many follies, which, as his discernment easily discovered, his imagination might sometimes incite him to mention too ludicrously. A little knowledge of the world is sufficient to discover that such weakness is very common, and that there are few who do not sometimes, in the wantonness of thoughtless mirth, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... on every side. Yet, after all, I believe no people arrange flowers so tastefully as the English. Our bouquets are not so large or so closely packed, and the flowers may be less rare, though scarcely less beautiful, yet they are grouped with more discernment and harmonious taste than elsewhere. The great business in these little "floral arsenals" is to pack the fragrant blossoms carefully in cotton-wool, for transmission to all parts of the world, especially to Covent Garden. Some are stowed in large round boxes like cheese-tubs, with ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... of common discernment who has read Dr. Buchanan's writings or conversed with him in relation to the topics which they treat, can have failed to recognize in him one of the very foremost thinkers of the day. He is certainly one of the most charming and instructive men to whom anybody with a ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... is 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 ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... but complimentary to the discernment of Viennese publishers and musicians of that period that, eleven years after Schubert's death, another composer had to come from Leipsic and give to the world the works of a colleague who not only had genius of the ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... that other travellers, whatever their quality or curiosity may have been, cannot obtain; and a genius capable of making the best improvement of every opportunity. But if the reader, after perusing one letter only has not discernment to distinguish that natural elegance, that delicacy of sentiment and observation, that easy gracefulness, and lovely simplicity, (which is the perfection of writing) and in which these Letters exceed all that has appeared ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... to the praise which he receives, and considers the sentence passed in his favour as the sentence of discernment. We admire in a friend that understanding that selected us for confidence; we admire more in a patron that bounty which, instead of scattering bounty indiscriminately, directed it to us; and if the patron be an author, those performances which gratitude forbids us to ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... it 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 ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... practically the same change, only regarded from another point of view. John was sent to effect repentance, that change of mind and heart by which the disobedient to the commands of God should be brought to possess and exercise the moral and religious discernment which dwells only in the spirits of the righteous. Disobedience is folly. True wisdom cannot be divorced from rectitude. Real rectitude cannot live apart ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... I spoke about my own life and interests, with an unsparing discernment, of which I should have been incapable a month ago, and in return I gained the key to his own character. It was devotion to the sea, wedded to a fire of pent-up patriotism struggling incessantly for an outlet ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... made a childish mistake. His criticism is just such as a boy might pique himself upon, who was educated on mechanical principles, and thought he had outgrown his Goody Two-shoes. With a wonderful dimness of discernment in poetic matters, considering his acuteness in others, he fancies he has settled the question by pronouncing such creations 'impossible'! To the brazier they are impossible, no doubt; but not to the poet. Their possibility, if the poet wills it, is to be conceded; the problem is, the creature ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... her intolerably was this discernment of the way in which—at least since their honeymoon—he must have been criticising and judging her—judging her by comparison with another woman. She seemed to see at a glance, the whole process of his mind, and her vanity ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sent him rolling some little way along the turfy path,—an operation which that sagacious quadruped endured with the most perfect passiveness, the most admirable non-resistance. No wonder that May's discernment was at fault, I myself, if I had not been aware of the trick, should have said that the ugly rough thing which she was trundling along, like a bowl or a cricket-ball, was an inanimate substance, something devoid of sensation and of will. At last my poor ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... and the most concise. But he blamed him for obscurity, forced and unnatural turns of expression, and barbarous licenses of idiom. The "Paradise" seemed to him tedious, as a whole, and much of the "Purgatory" heavy. Hallam repeated, if he did not originate that nice bit of discernment, that in his "Paradise" Dante uses only three leading ideas—light, music, and motion. Then came Macaulay's essay "Milton," in the Edinburgh for 1825, with the celebrated parallel between the "Divine Comedy" and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Mabrouka, but by the girl. Their eyes were always on her; and though Sanda DeLisle was very young, and had never tried consciously to become a student of human character, it seemed to her, in these new and strange conditions of life which sharpened her powers of discernment, that she could dimly read what the brains ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... of disappointing me. No man loves to frustrate expectations which have been formed in his favour; and the pleasure which I promise myself from your journals and remarks is so great, that perhaps no degree of attention or discernment will ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... satisfied, however, he said gravely, "I see the strain you underwent, my gallant friend. I see also the earnestness of your affection for your most noble pupil. He is to be congratulated upon the possession of a servant capable of such discernment and devotion. But I recall my question—How many are ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... remarkably quick in the discovery of attachments, and had enjoyed the advantage of raising the blushes and the vanity of many a young lady by insinuations of her power over such a young man; and this kind of discernment enabled her soon after her arrival at Barton decisively to pronounce that Colonel Brandon was very much in love with Marianne Dashwood. She rather suspected it to be so, on the very first evening ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... out of life there must be some adequate fulfilment of one's best self. Man is a bundle of tastes and appetites, some lofty, and some ignoble, but all crying out for satisfaction. Wisdom lies in the discernment of essentials; in just discrimination between false and true tastes. Man has been a long time upon the earth, and he has spent his time for the most part in one ceaseless experiment, viz., how he may become a satisfactory creature in his own eyes. All civilisations converge upon ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... would split the rock of Peter, that the absence of Signor Pessina for twenty minutes previous to the performance, eked out with a little ventriloquism, and some Pepper accessories would explain much, and that there is also another hypothesis which I will leave to the discernment of my readers, and to ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... Sagacious reader of the works of God, And in His Word sagacious. Such too thine, Milton, whose genius had angelic wings, And fed on manna. And such thine, in whom Our British Themis gloried with just cause, Immortal Hale! for deep discernment praised, And sound integrity not more, than famed For ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... wishes, took her seat in a conspicuous place, where the jury could see 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 ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... formerly levelled at his head, not even in the "Refutation of Deism," that remarkable argument in the Socratic style between Eusebes and Theosophus in which, as in all his prose works, is displayed keen discernment, logical acuteness, and close analytical reasoning not surpassed by the greatest philosophers—most certainly his notions of God were not in unison with the current theological ideas, and it was this daring rebellion against the popular faith, the chief support of custom which caused all the trouble. ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... With her searching discernment, Mrs. Fabens had discovered in him more than one design which she pronounced artful; she studied his character, and told her husband and daughter in confidence, she believed him a cunning flatterer, and a cheat; and that he would not always sail in ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... gust of fresh country air clearing away the mist of time and enabling one to see Dorothy at Chicksands quite clearly. It is fashionable to deny Macaulay everything but memory; but he had the good taste and discernment to admire this letter, and quote from it in his Essay on Sir William Temple,—a quotation for which I shall always remain ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... in this satisfactory state. She knew that Margaret was exposed to as much observation and inquiry as a country village affords, respecting her disappointed attachment—that the Greys were very angry, and praised Margaret to every person they met—that Mr Walcot eulogised Mrs Rowland's discernment to all Mrs Rowland's party—that Mrs Howell and Miss Miskin lifted up their eyes in thankfulness at Mr Enderby's escape from such a connection—that Mr Hope was reported to be rather flat in spirits—and that Margaret ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... legions and as he was clothed with the purple by one of themselves, constituted the ceremony of his inauguration. The ancient archdeacon was still one of the deacons; [582:2] as he was the chief almoner of the Church, he required to possess tact, discernment, and activity; and, in the fourth century, he was nominated to his office by his fellow-deacons. Jerome assures us that, until the time of Heraclas and Dionysius, the elders made a bishop just in the same way as in his own day the soldiers made an emperor, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... was awkward, fat and overgrown, With a round full-moon face, that fairly shone As though to meet the simile's demand. And, cumbrous though he seemed, both eye and hand Were dowered with the discernment and deft skill Of the true artisan: He shaped at will, In his old father's shop, on rainy days, Little toy-wagons, and curved-runner sleighs; The trimmest bows and arrows—fashioned, too. Of "seasoned timber," such as Noey knew How to select, prepare, and then complete, And ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... John Jay to the people of New York, urging the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, "silence and blank paper neither give nor take away anything," and Alexander Hamilton says (Federalist, No. 83), "Every man of discernment must at once perceive the wide difference between silence and abolition." The mode and manner in which the people shall take part in the government of their creation may be prescribed by the constitution, but the right itself is antecedent to all constitutions. It is inalienable, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... regarded his sister-in-law's plump, kindly face with amusement. She had the best heart in the world and the biggest, but she had not the discernment to know that there were treasures even in Miller's Notch and Sunnyside, ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... should be formed to wipe 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... some surprise among the company, as you may imagine. Mrs. Fielding, being a lady of infinite discernment, suggested that the cake was poisoned, and related a narrative of a cake, which, within her knowledge, had turned a seminary for young ladies, blue. But she was overruled by acclamation; and the cake was cut by May, with ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... and cloves had disordered her head, instead of comforting her stomachic 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 an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... external senses. For it is a fatal mistake to suppose that ugliness which is taken for beauty will answer all the purposes of beauty; the subtle relation between all kinds of truth and fitness in our life forbids that bad taste should ever be harmless to our moral sensibility or our intellectual discernment; and—more than that—as it is probable that fine musical harmonies have a sanative influence over our bodily organization, it is also probable that just coloring and lovely combinations of lines may ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... compositions supposed, and indispensably implied an infinite number of combinations which belong intirely to the mind, or intellectual faculties; as for example, especially an attentive and judicious discernment of the most interesting truths of human nature. How extensive a study this exacts, it is more easy ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... simple facts and teachings of the Scriptures, protecting them from attack by shutting them from sight, and in a few brief and direct statements cuts into the substance and heart of the subjects. This felicity comes partly from his being a man gifted with spiritual discernment as well as spiritual feeling, and partly from the instinct of his nature to look at doctrines in their connection with life. He excels equally in interpreting the truth which may be hidden in a dogma, and in overturning dogmas in which no truth is to be found. In a single ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... listened to. She, to whom they are told, has reasons for discrediting them. Though but a child in years, Francesca Halberger is not childish in understanding. The strange experiences and perils through which she, and all related to her, had passed, have given her the discernment of a more mature age; and well comprehends she her present situation, with other misfortunes that have led to it. She is not ignorant of the young chief's partiality for herself; more than once made manifest to her ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... continued Ernest, "very soon begins to assert her rights; the bud gradually twists itself round and ascends, whilst the root obeys a similar impulse and descends—is not this a proof of discernment?" ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... which were once left to the pulpit, the political platform, or the lecture hall. Both of them, in the case of the extreme realists, are being used as the store-room or the dissecting chamber of the experimental scientist. Supposing that an author's facts are supremely important, his discernment most acute, his ideas significant, still, before we condemn the public unheard, we are compelled to ask of him: Have you given to this material a form which it will accept? Have you addressed the public in a language which has a wide human appeal? Are you, in fact, a master of that higher ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... system, or by the degree of inquietude which has given birth to them. 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 ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... freely of themselves. This repose, which is a kind of enchantment, returns every night, while darkness interrupts and hinders labour. Now, who is it that contrived such a suspension? Who is it that so well chose the operations that ought to continue; and, with so just discernment, excluded all such as ought to be interrupted? The next day all past fatigue is gone and vanished. The animal works on, as if he had never worked before; and this reviving gives him a vivacity and vigour that invites him to new labour. Thus the nerves are still full of spirits, the flesh ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... and this with sufficient skill to deceive children or simple people. Suppose now that somebody came to us and told us, how he had met a man who knew all that everybody knows, and better than anybody:—should we not infer him to be a simpleton who, having no discernment of truth and falsehood, had met with a wizard or enchanter, whom he fancied to be all-wise? And when we hear persons saying that Homer and the tragedians know all the arts and all the virtues, must we not ...
— The Republic • Plato
... of government are three oversight bodies: 1) Assembly of Experts (Majles-Khebregan), a popularly elected body charged with determining the succession of the Supreme Leader, reviewing his performance, and deposing him if deemed necessary; 2) Expediency Council or the Council for the Discernment of Expediency (Majma-e-Tashkise-Maslahat-e-Nezam) exerts supervisory authority over the executive, judicial, and legislative branches and resolves legislative issues on which the Majles and the Council of Guardians disagree and since 1989 has been used to advise national religious leaders ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... and unsparing ridicule. Vicar Bull, of Siddington, and Priest Careless, of Cirencester, in particular, urged the Bishop to deal sharply with him. The former accused him of dealing in the Black Art, and filled the Bishop's ear with certain marvellous stories of his preternatural sagacity and discernment in discovering cattle which were lost. The Bishop took occasion to inquire into these stories; and was told by Roberts that, except in a single instance, the discoveries were the result of his acquaintance with the habits of animals and his knowledge of the localities where they were lost. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... youth even to the present I was beyond measure aflame with a most aspiring and noble love (1) more perhaps than, were I to enlarge upon it, would seem to accord with my lowly condition. Whereby, among people of discernment to whose knowledge it had come, I had much praise and high esteem, but nevertheless extreme discomfort and suffering not indeed by reason of cruelty on the part of the beloved lady, but through superabundant ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... observe, 'very jealous on that point.' Few ever passed him in the street without asking who he was; for not only did his primitive dress, his broad-brimmed hat, and his antique shoe buckles attract attention, but the beauty and benevolence of his face was sure to fix the eye of ordinary discernment. He was a living temperance lecture, and those who desire to preserve good looks could not ask a more infallible receipt, than that sweet temper and out-flowing benevolence which made his countenance please ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... 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 ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... is presumed, need be given, for the insertion of so able a specimen of philosophical discernment, and judicious reasoning. Few men have exhibited happier talents for this department of literature, than the younger Forster; and it is perhaps the more generous to yield him this commendation now, as his merit has hitherto been almost totally ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... volume of Audubon, and this proved the turning-point in his life, inspiring a new zeal for the study of birds and enabling him to see with keener eyes not only the birds themselves, but their nests and surroundings, and to hear with more discernment the peculiar calls and songs ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... now regarded you as little more than a boy, in spite of your pluck in going up as a native soldier to Chitral. Now I shall hold you in much higher respect, and shall regard you as a young man with an exceptionally sharp eye, and exceptionally keen discernment." ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... dropped anent the old Siwash with so strange a look upon his face. No end of men remembered afterward that they had been struck by his extraordinary figure, and forever afterward prided themselves upon their swift discernment ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... does the enduement of the Spirit more distinctly manifest itself than in the fine discernment of revealed truth which it imparts. As in service, the contrast between working in the power of the Spirit and in the energy of the flesh is easily discernible, even more clearly in knowledge and teaching is the contrast between ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... carding and the other processes of which I was just now speaking; the art of discernment or division in wool and yarn, which is effected in one manner with the comb and in another with the hands, is variously described under all the names which ...
— Statesman • Plato
... needful to mention here that souls which are yet in themselves, whatever degree of light and ardor they have attained, are unqualified for it. They often think they have this discernment, when it is nothing else but sympathy or antipathy of nature. Our Lord destroyed in me every sort of natural antipathy. The soul must be very pure, and depending on God alone, that all these things may be experienced in Him. In proportion as this ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... third-form schoolboy to explain?[1] If editors, commentators, {568} critics, and all the countless throng who are ambitious to daub with their un-tempered mortar, or scribble their names upon the most majestic edifice of genius that the world ever saw, lack the little discernment necessary to interpret aright the above extract from Cymbeline, for the last hundred years racked and tortured in vain, let them at length learn henceforth to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... 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. ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... was a 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, the humble and the uneducated, and a welcome guest at ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... and English" never became what may be called a popular book, it nevertheless attracted a good deal of attention, and the author received a great number of letters expressive of admiration and gratitude for the clear discernment and impartiality with which the differences existing between the two nations had been studied ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... and beast, it was maintained that there were human beings without 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 ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... a general to show his ability. The military art would not be so difficult in practice, and those who have become so distinguished in it would not have acquired their renown, had it been a thing of invariable rules. To be really a great general, a man must have great tact and discernment in order to adopt the best plan in each case as it presents itself; he must have a ready coup d'oeil, so as to do the right thing at the right time and place; for what is excellent one day may be very injurious the next. The plans of ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... said Peter in a small voice, "will I credit myself with any deep discernment, any keen penetration. How I could have read that matter and looked at those pictures and not seen you in and through and over them is a thing I can't imagine. It's great, Linda, absolutely great! Of course I will help you any ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... speaks with so much eloquence; but it is of great importance that our pupils should set a high value upon the expressions of our approbation. They will value it in proportion to their esteem and their affection for us; we include in the word esteem, a belief in our justice, and in our discernment. Expressions of affection, associated with praise, not only increase the pleasure, but they alter the nature the of that pleasure; and if they gratify vanity, they at the same time excite some of the best feelings of the heart. The selfishness of vanity is corrected by ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... distinguish the danger and the courage to meet it. Milner's worn face and prematurely grizzled hair told of the crushing weight which had rested upon him during three eventful years. A gentle scholar, he might have seemed more fitted for a life of academic calm than for the stormy part which the discernment of Mr. Chamberlain had assigned to him. The fine flower of an English university, low-voiced and urbane, it was difficult to imagine what impression he would produce upon those rugged types of which South Africa is so peculiarly prolific. But behind the reserve of a gentleman there ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the heart fervently. Be of one mind; live in peace, then shall your conferences be kept with much blessing, and you be subject one to another in the fear of God. No one will then tenaciously hold his own opinion as the best, or as infallible, but every one will gladly take advantage of the other's discernment, and rather follow what is likely to attain the desired end, than his own private inclination. In the division of your labour consider yourselves as members of one body—that the eye cannot be supposed to do what the hand can, and the hand cannot ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... nor of which the ministering fathers complain with more reason, than the little discernment with which people have been accustomed to judge and condemn them, representing as common to all the body the vices of a few of the members. Consequently, there is not one who does not read without ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... are aware of it, when the being of the British nation, I mean the being of its importance, however strange it may now appear to some, will depend on her union with America. It requires but a small portion of the gift of discernment for any one to foresee, that providence will erect a mighty empire in America; and our posterity will have it recorded in history, that their fathers migrated from an ISLAND in a distant part of the world, the inhabitants of which had long been revered for wisdom and valour. ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... to reflect. And 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 ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... futile, and even if we played a part in it, we should be as foolish as we should be weak, not to recognize that the will which opposes us is as inflexible as our own—"such is life"—that is our ultimate comment. An appreciation of tragedy involves, therefore, a sure discernment of the essential disharmony of existence, yet at the same time, a feeling for the moral values which it may create; neither the optimist nor the utilitarian can enter ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... a lady of great eminence for learning and philosophy. I had frequently observed the barrenness and uniformity of connubial conversation, and therefore thought highly of my own prudence and discernment, when I selected from a multitude of wealthy beauties, the deep-read Misothea, who declared herself the inexorable enemy of ignorant pertness, and puerile levity; and scarcely condescended to make tea, but for the linguist, the geometrician, the astronomer, or the poet. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... slowly; the shafts of wit wielded at each other by ——, and ——, are, as the common phrase is, 'a caution;' it requires a man of more than common discernment to see their point. You have, doubtless, before this, seen the announcement of the appointment of Hastings and Stuart, as Auditor and Treasurer; what will become of the Internal Improvement system, is doubtful. Committees are now engaged in examining the Bank of Michigan, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... negligences, which would sound incredible, were they narrated to a soldier. To all this is added a quiet natural arrogance (UEBERMUTH),"—very quiet, mostly unconscious, and as if inborn and coming by discernment of mere facts,—"which tempts them to despise the enemy as well as the danger; and as they very seldom think of making any surprisal themselves, they generally take it for granted that ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... privilege of a 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 were pursued and extirpated as the enemies of society; the driving away of horses ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... letter, the sagacious and well-ordered inferences of which must be candidly admitted, that a claim for superiority of discernment over Nelson has been made for its writer. It must be remembered, however, not as a matter of invidious detraction from one man, but in simple justice to the other, whose insight and belief had taken form in such wonderful work, that Nelson also had fully believed that the enemy, if they left ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... my father's cousin, Mr Alexander Clues, that was then deacon convener, and a man of great potency in his way, and possessed of an influence in the town-council of which he was well worthy, being a person of good discernment, and well versed in matters appertaining to the guildry. Mr Clues, as we were mellowing over the toddy bowl, said, that by and by the council would be looking to me to fill up the first gap that might happen therein; and Dr Swapkirk, the then minister, who had officiated on the occasion, ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... a waiter entered, followed by two scullions bearing in three baskets a dinner, and six bottles of wine selected with discernment. ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... consideration still more cogent. I can assure you that the spirit of the people cries out for this declaration; the military, in particular, men and officers, are outrageous on the subject; and a man of your excellent discernment need not be told how dangerous it would be, in our present circumstances, to dally with the spirit, or disappoint the expectations, of the bulk of the people. May not despair, anarchy, and final ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... 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 ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... Sagacity they saw thro' all my private Views and Designs, and with what Facility they brought about my Disgrace; and therefore, when I have discover'd in any of those concern'd with me in Business, a fine Discernment, and a Genius for great Affairs, I have from that Minute look'd upon such as dangerous, and for that Reason either procured their Disgrace, or under the Pretence of doing them Honour, prevail'd upon the Emperor to confer upon them the Government of some distant ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... upon your friendships, and leave it to you to adopt the manner in which the said gentleman may arrive in security, without molestation, at Fyzabad; but at the same time let the plan be so managed that it may not come to the knowledge of any zemindars: in this case you are men of discernment. However, he is to come to Fyzabad: extend your assistance ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that in the dark we can hardly taste a fricassee, or tell whether our pipe is alight or not, and the most intelligent boy, if accommodated with claws or hoofs instead of fingers, would be likely to remain on the lowest form? If so, it is easy to understand that our discernment of men's motives must depend on the completeness of the elements we can bring from our own susceptibility and our own experience. See to it, friend, before you pronounce a too hasty judgement, that your own moral sensibilities are not of ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... but the hand of Van Buren had shaped its character and inspired its winning qualities. It had the instant effect that Van Buren plainly invoked for it—the unanimous election of Rufus King. Perhaps, on the whole, nothing in Van Buren's official life showed greater political courage or discernment. It is not so famous as his Sherrod Williams letter of 1836, or the celebrated Texas letter with which he faced the crisis of 1844, but it ranks with the public utterances of those years when he took the risk of meeting living issues that divided men on small margins. There was a strength and ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Cockney, and guardian of Priscilla Tomboy of the West Indies. Barnacle is a tradesman of the old school, who thinks the foppery and extravagance of the "Cockney" school inconsistent with prosperous shop-keeping. Though brusque and even ill-mannered, he has good sense and good discernment of character.—The Romp (altered from Bickerstaff's ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... forget the person of Lady Mary, and think only of her mind.—Her Ladyship, a little chagrin'd Sir James's proposals were not seconded by Mr. Powis, pretended immediate business into Oxfordshire.—The Baronet wants not discernment: he saw through her motive; and taking his opportunity, insinuated the violence of his son's passion, and likewise the great timidity it occasion'd—he even prevail'd on Lady Powis to propose returning with her ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... politic, firm entrenched, Have borne with heavy hand upon thy race. Quezox: Ah noble sire, how well thy mind conceives The ills which bear my hapless people down. Much learning fits thee for the ruler's seat And keen discernment flashes from thine eye. There pigmies move within a circle charmed And fatten on rich spoils with cruel glee. They force their alien ways with tyrant hands Upon my people; and with cold disdain Refuse our council, when 'twere meet and wise. I beg thee, cast them out, both ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... been reputed to be pious—you are, doubtless, often surprised to find how grossly erroneous are their moral perceptions. Their false education still cleaves to them. They are yet, to a great extent, in the mould of a corrupted public opinion; and, as far from having a clear discernment of moral truth, as were the partially unsealed eyes which saw "men, as trees, walking." The first letter to the Church at Corinth, proves that the new principles implanted in its members had not yet purged out the leaven of their old wickedness; and that their conceptions ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of minuteness and particularity frequently tend to give an air of truth to a piece, and to interest the spectator in an extraordinary manner. Such circumstances, therefore, cannot wholly be rejected; but if there be anything in the art which requires peculiar nicety of discernment, it is the disposition of these minute circumstantial parts which, according to the judgment employed in the choice, become so useful to truth or ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... obtained, which is satisfactory, and of service. We must, however, make this distinction, that in the allegorical representations of Greece, there was always a covert meaning, though it may have escaped our discernment. In short, we must look upon antient mythology as being yet in a chaotic state, where the mind of man has been wearied with roaming over the crude consistence without ever finding out one spot where it could repose in safety. Hence has arisen ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... 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 impartial equity against all degrading views of human nature, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... influenced him in some slight degree both here and in drawing the character of Iachimo in Cymbeline. But even this slight influence seems to me doubtful. If Don John in Much Ado had been an Englishman, critics would have admired Shakespeare's discernment in making his English villain sulky and stupid. If Edmund's father had been Duke of Ferrara instead of Earl of Gloster, they would have said that Edmund could have been nothing but an Italian. Change ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... 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 mishaps, till it seems to you ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... said the Doctor. 'One would think it was a naiad that had had an offer from the mountains next, for she has been shedding a perfect river of tears ever since; and all that the united discernment of the family has yet gathered is, that she cries rather more when we tell her she is right to say No than when we tell her she is right to ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... without a hard struggle. 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. Not having, like her daughter, the vigor of youth, nor ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... the alchemists of old felt that they lacked but one element; if they could obtain that one, they believed they could transmute the baser metals into pure gold. It is so in character. There are individuals with rare mental gifts, and delicate spiritual discernment who fail utterly in life because they lack the one element,—self- reliance. This would unite all their energies, and focus them into strength ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... is in Chancery, of course. It would be an insult to the discernment of any man with half an eye to tell him so. Whether "Tom" is the popular representative of the original plaintiff or defendant in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, or whether Tom lived here when the suit had laid the street waste, all alone, until other ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... occupation 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 detect the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... contract his horizon and widen it. If he undertake to tell an old story, he must needs successively—or sometimes at one and the same moment—assume the credulity of the folk he restores to life, and the discernment of the most accomplished critic. By a strange process, he must divide his personality. He must be at once the ancient man and the modern man; he must live on two different planes, like that curious character in a story by Mr. H.G. Wells, who ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... true, but the angered do not reason. Thou art not suspected, Marguerite, except as having heard the truth from thy husband since the deed has been committed, but thine own discernment will show that naught is more probable than that a hot contention about the past may have led Balthazar, who is accustomed to see blood, into the commission ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... snow, or the pathetic and forcible eloquence of Ulysses. The functions of a judge, which are sometimes incompatible with those of a prince, were exercised by Julian, not only as a duty, but as an amusement; and although he might have trusted the integrity and discernment of his Praetorian praefects, he often placed himself by their side on the seat of judgment. The acute penetration of his mind was agreeably occupied in detecting and defeating the chicanery of the advocates, who labored to disguise the truths of facts, and to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... threateningly in the face. And we well remember now what pain these petty jealousies gave to the sensitive nature of our departed friend. But these gradually subsided, until there was hardly an antislavery editor of average discernment who did not come to see that a national organ like the Era, by legitimating discussion and keeping up the heat and blaze of a vigorous agitation, at the nation's very centre, against that nation's own ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... to worse than arson or assault. Their attitude towards the creative artist is always one of large, tolerant pity. They honestly think that if only the artist knew his business as they know his business, if only he had their discernment and impartiality, and if only he wasn't so confoundedly ignorant and violent—how different he would be, how much nicer and better, how much more effective! They are eternally ready to show an artist where he is wrong and what he ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... 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 ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... seemed to me, on reading the essays collected in this volume, as they appeared in the periodical[18] for which they were written, that the author not only possessed herself a very true discernment of the qualities in mediaeval art which were justly deserving of praise, but had unusually clear understanding of the degree in which she might expect to cultivate such discernment in the general mind of polite travelers; nor have I less ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... so that she expects no kindness from you, and so, from diffidence and restraint of tenderness, her face has set hard into coldness. But that is only a mask. How you treat each other, you women! And you are as wanting in discernment, too, as you are in kindness and sympathy. She has had to put on that mask of coldness to hide what you make her suffer, and it will take long loving to melt it now, and make her look human again. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... his own conversations with her, when he was so acutely alive to the fact that she was the most naturally brilliant woman he had ever known or met; and had capacities for culture and attainment, as she had gifts of discernment and skill in thought, in marked contrast to the best of the ladies of their world. To him she had naturally shown only the one side of her nature—she adapted herself to him as she did to every one else; she had put ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... weather, never doubting that by dint of persevering observation the mystery would be disclosed to me next spring. At last this spring, so fervently desired, arrived; I brought to bear all the patience, all the imagination, all the insight and discernment that I may possess; but, to my utter shame and still greater regret, the secret escaped me. Oh, how painful are those tortures of indecision, when one has to postpone till the following year an investigation which has ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... by the accession of a new member. His conversation abounded with novelty. His gaiety was almost boisterous, but was capable of yielding to a grave deportment when the occasion required it. His discernment was acute, but he was prone to view every object merely as supplying materials for mirth. His conceptions were ardent but ludicrous, and his memory, aided, as he honestly acknowledged, by his invention, was an ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... right or wrong in what they believe, I hold it as certain as anything can be that the distinction which I have just drawn, and which they all implicitly draw for themselves, is logically valid. For no one is entitled to deny the possibility of what may be termed an organ of spiritual discernment. In fact to do so would be to vacate the position of pure agnosticism in toto—and this even if there were no objective, or strictly scientific, evidences in favour of such an organ, such as we have in the ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... mother has been described to me as a touching and melancholy scene. It appears that as this meek and retired woman was extricated from the coil of mortality, her intellect grew brighter, her powers of discernment stronger, and her character in every respect more elevated and commanding. Although she had said much less about our firesides and altars than her husband, I see no reason to doubt that she had ever been quite as faithful as he could be to the one, and as much devoted ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of 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 Magi declar'd ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... said to me, "I have spoken to you of my two rival cooks; now is the time to justify the reputation of high discernment which I have attributed to you in the minds of ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... man in the pavilion who was agonizing had said to her that she looked "punished." She had been surprised, almost startled, by his flash of discernment. But she was sure he thought that matter only a question of coloring, of emaciation, of the shapes of features, and of the way eyes were ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... discernment on the part of the Mexicans to perceive that the meeting between Captain Forest and his family was not what might be termed particularly felicitous. Even Senora Fernandez was quick enough to perceive that things were going from bad to worse, and in an effort ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... wisdom and this almost superhuman virtue? Who gave to him this insight into the fundamental principles of morality? Who, in this respect, made him a greater light and a clearer expounder than the Christian Paley? Who made him, in all spiritual discernment, a wiser man than the gifted John Stuart Mill, who seems to have been a candid searcher after truth? In the wisdom of Socrates you see some higher force than intellectual hardihood or intellectual clearness. How much this pagan did to emancipate and elevate the soul! ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... not difficult to read her thoughts in her letters. Of course, she told me about your adventure with Miss Harcourt, and she has mentioned her a good many times, since; and it did not need a great deal of discernment to see what Carrie's opinion was regarding the young lady. Carrie has her weak points—as, for example, when she took up with that wild Irishman—but she has plenty of good sense; and I am sure, by the way she wrote about this Miss Harcourt, that ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... in the other's blaze, a galaxy Of life and glory. In the midst stood Man, 485 Outwardly, inwardly contemplated, As, of all visible natures, crown, though born Of dust, and kindred to the worm; a Being, Both in perception and discernment, first In every capability of rapture, 490 Through the divine effect of power and love; As, more than anything we know, instinct With godhead, and, by reason and by will, Acknowledging ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... of hearing on the subject. 'I think he shows where one trouble lies.... It's in him and his kind, David. His periodical sells to the great number. He is a very bright man, and his art is in knowing what the great number wants. Being brighter, and of finer discernment, than those who buy his product, he debases his taste to make his organs relish the coarser article. That's the first evil—prostituting himself.... Now a people glutted with what it wants is a stagnant ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... turned his arms against the king of Navarre, the great disturber of France during that age; he defeated this prince by the conduct of Bertrand du Guesclin, a gentleman of Brittany, one of the most accomplished characters of the age, whom he had the discernment to choose as the instrument of all his victories:[**] and he obliged his enemy to accept ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... cash would have been quite enough for a man of Signor Malipizzo's discernment. Muhlen had not bolted. Nor was he the kind of man to lose his life by an accident. Not he! Muhlen was careful of his skin. Ergo, his disappearance was due to something which came under the second class, section, or category. He had been done ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... intelligently. Not merely must there be a desire to perform the service; but there must be an enlightened apprehension of its nature. "It is a snare to the man who devoureth that which is holy, and after vows to make inquiry."[127] Applicable to the intellectual discernment that true faith includes, as well as to that grace in its spiritual character, is the declaration, "He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him."[128] ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... judge by candlelight, and does my friend Christopher Jackson credit." And then he would have changed the subject, and sipped his coffee in peace over domestic matters of a calmer hue; but Mr. Yates, without discernment to catch Sir Thomas's meaning, or diffidence, or delicacy, or discretion enough to allow him to lead the discourse while he mingled among the others with the least obtrusiveness himself, would keep him on the topic of the theatre, would torment him with questions and remarks relative ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... he thanked God for her happy escape, and felt no resentment against this poor, misguided child, who had taken refuge from the loneliness of her heart, in his love, as in a haven of shelter. He only reproached his own want of discernment, as he said to himself: "Elise had cause to be angry with me and to doubt my affection. I bore solitude and the constant separation from my daughter because I thought I was working for her, but I forgot that at the same time she was solitary and alone, that she missed a father's ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... for this he published, in 1829, a biographical notice of Beethoven, in which his appreciation of him is remarkably in advance of his age. He wrote there: "The Choral Symphony is the culminating point of Beethoven's genius," and he speaks of the Fourth Symphony in C sharp minor with great discernment.] ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... 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? . . . Have you ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... 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 ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... surrounded by friendly faces, and made much of by all in the fort. He, being able to speak French fluently, made himself a great favorite with the men, and he enjoyed many long conversations with the Abbe, who was a man of much acumen and discernment, and saw more clearly the course which events were likely to take than did those amongst whom ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... entitled: How Men Propose, was eagerly sought by young women who were awaiting definite experience. This was discovered to be a collection of proposals carefully selected from fiction. It was done with care and discernment, but was not satisfying. The natural inference was that the actual affairs were just like those in ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... an opportunity of profiting from the improvements of that laborious people; and however little the majority of these pious travellers might have had such objects in their view, something useful must unavoidably have stuck to them; a few certainly saw with more discernment, and rendered their travels serviceable to their country by importing other things besides miracles and legends. Thus a communication was opened between this remote island and countries of which it otherwise could then scarcely have heard mention made; and pilgrimages ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the present time, considering that a distinctive feature of this age is a large increase of the knowledge of the facts and laws of nature, and that possibly, contemporaneously with such knowledge, God may vouchsafe a fuller understanding of the Book of Revelation, and a discernment of the [oe]onian gospel it proclaims (compare Dan. xii. 3, 4). That the true interpretation of the Apocalypse will eventually be reached is implied by the words, "Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... drift, now. He wanted to know if I suspected him; and, to that end, was quite willing to match his wit against mine. His contempt for my discernment was not, especially, flattering; but, sometimes, it does no harm to be taken for a fool—if one is not. And I was conceited enough to consider myself the latter. Which, however, may only have proven that Lotzen ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... symphony is conditioned upon a 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 ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... 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 thing, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the mood and time for them, long after their original circumstance had become a pleasant memory. If any one were to say that it did not fully represent the Italian poetry of the period which it covers chronologically, I should applaud his discernment; and perhaps I should not contend that it did much more than indicate the general character of that poetry. At the same time, I think that it does not ignore any principal name among the Italian poets of the great movement which resulted in the national freedom and unity, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... tried tying it up with a cord, and afterwards with a rawhide thong, but had to nail the end, as it could loosen any knot in a few minutes. It would sometimes entangle itself around a pole to which it was fastened, and then unwind the coils again with the greatest discernment. Its chain allowed it to swing down below the verandah, but it could not ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester |
