Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Discerning   Listen
adjective
Discerning  adj.  Acute; shrewd; sagacious; sharp-sighted.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Discerning" Quotes from Famous Books



... the baron has not the quick, discerning eye of a mother—or a love either," she added shyly. "Bless his innocence, he knows naught of it yet. Sir George, I trust Master Manners is a ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... every-day life is reality in fragments,—the Alps split into paving-stones,—Achilles with a cold in the head. Seen in due connection, they make up the reality; but their prominence as they occur is casual and shifting, and the result dependent on the spectator's power of discerning, amid the endless series in which they are involved, more or less ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... your conduct there is not a little that to me, piteously inclined towards you as I am, yet appeareth obnoxious to the edge of this woman's reproaches. But think not, O bewildered and not-with-sufficient-distinctness-discerning-the-nature-of-things Titmouse! that she hath only a sharp and bitter tongue. In this woman behold a mother, and it may be that she will soften before you, who have plainly, as I hear, neither father ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... you therefore to begin your study of natural history and landscape by discerning the simple outlines and the pleasant colors of things; and to rest in them as long as you can. But, observe, you can only do this on one condition—that of striving also to create, in reality, the beauty which you seek in imagination. It ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin

... Being of a discerning mind, she idled about the Platz till after nine, for it had been told to her that the great sleep rather late in the morning. What should she say to her serene highness? What kind of a curtsy should she make? These and a hundred other questions flitted through her head. At least she would ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath

... her face, a sign from her hand. Gone! He walked away with his head down. The more blissful the hours just spent, the greater the desolation when they are over. Of such is the nature of love, as he was now discerning. The longing to have her always with him was growing fast. Since her husband knew—why wait? There would be no rest for either of them in an existence of meetings and partings like this, with the menace of that fellow. She must come away with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... How agonized the turning, In those my earlier days of loss and pain,— Of eyes to space and night as though by yearning— Some wall might yield and I behold again A certain angel, fled beyond discerning; In vain I chafed and sought—alas, in vain, From spurring though my heart's dark world returned To Dante's page, those wearied thoughts of mine; Again I read, again my longing burned.— A voice melodious spake in every line, But from ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall

... in the lines of that Argus paragraph, and a flippant incivility might be read between them by the least discerning. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... abstract lines remain, in a great indifference. They came thus to see death in its distinction. Then following it perhaps one [94] stage further, dwelling for a moment on the point where all this transitory dignity must break up, and discerning with no clearness a new body, they paused just in time, and abstained, with ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... bears the Arab name of El-Azirezeh—the Arabic form of the name Lazarus—and at once identifies it with a spot so sacred and interesting in Gospel story. It is described by the most recent and discerning of Eastern writers as "a wild mountain hamlet, screened by an intervening ridge from the view of the top of Olivet—perched on its open plateau of rock—the last collection of human habitations before the ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff

... public insult that was before her. As she told her story she was unable to distinguish between the figments of her fear and what she had any reason to fear. He listened in utter consternation, and was no more capable than she of discerning between the real and the imaginary in her story. Nothing had ever been farther from his mind than to suspect how they were being dogged. He tried to understand: he could find nothing to say: against such enemies he was disarmed. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... correspondent, a young man who ate bortsch with the air of having invented it. Sledonti's "Poems of Death and Passion" were now being sold by the thousand in seven European languages, and were about to be translated into Syrian, a circumstance which made the discerning critics of the Nuremberg rather shy of maturing their future judgments ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... and, mindful of the precept of Socrates, I do not think it right either to keep the truth concealed or allow falsehood to pass. But this, however it may be, I leave to thy judgment and to the verdict of the discerning. Moreover, lest the course of events and the true facts should be hidden from posterity, I have myself committed to writing an ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius

... have been turned from that manifold idolatry to the one true worship and have been enlightened by God's Word. More than that, in Christ have been bestowed upon you great and glorious gifts—discerning of the Scriptures, diversities of tongues, power to work miracles—things impossible to the world. It is unmistakably evident that you embrace the true God, who does not, like dumb idols, leave you to wander in the error of your own speculations, uncounseled ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... put through its paces before him, its pedigree and brief history recounted to him; mentally he saw a stable lad put it over a jump or two, with credit to all concerned, and inevitably he saw himself outbidding less discerning rivals and securing the desired piece of horseflesh, to be the chief glory and mainstay of his hunting stable, to carry him well and truly and cleverly through many a joyous long-to-be-remembered run. That ...
— When William Came • Saki

... Discerning a note of pity in the letters from Scotland, she bade her friends not to waste their sympathy upon her. "I am just surrounded with love," she wrote. It was to the children she referred. "I wake up in the early dusk of ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... you've behaved sensibly—at last!" he answered audaciously. "June knew she wouldn't see either of us again for some time when we left her at Victoria—June is a most discerning woman." ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... bodings of distant evil with which the more discerning contemplated the new and arduous enterprise in which the ambition of Essex had engaged him! In the meantime, all things conspired to delude him into a false security and to augment that presumption which formed the most dangerous defect of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... to the doctrines of the creeds and the New Testament which is hastening the disintegration of sectarianism, is partly due to infidelity in the churches. Discerning critics cannot fail to see that much of the drift toward denominational union is due to the leadership of preachers who, through rationalism, have lost faith in the inspiration of the Bible and consequently in evangelical Christianity. As I was a student for ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz

... particularly of those reverend persons in whom she most confided, seconded by the arguments of Ferdinand, that she consented to solicit from the pope a bull for the introduction of the Holy Office into Castile. Sixtus the Fourth, who at that time filled the pontifical chair, easily discerning the sources of wealth and influence, which this measure opened to the court of Rome, readily complied with the petition of the sovereigns, and expedited a bull bearing date November 1st, 1478, authorizing them to appoint two or three ecclesiastics, inquisitors for the detection ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... born but to find that it has spent or has lost all its wealth. Unhappy man would he be, who, walking his garden, should scent only the earthy savour of leaves dead or dying, never perceiving, and that afar off, the heavenly odour of roses fresh to-day from the Maker's hands. The discerning by spiritual aroma may lead to discernment by the eye, and to that careful scrutiny, and thence greater knowledge, of which the eye is instrument ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... one of them, who, although he has all the symptoms of the vice appearing upon every occasion, can look with such an impartial eye upon himself, as to believe that the imputation thrown upon him is not altogether groundless and unfair? Who, if he were told by men of a discerning spirit and a strong conjecture, of all the evil and absurd things which that false heart of his would at one time or other betray him into, would not believe as little, and wonder as much, as Hazael did before him? Thus, for instance; ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... to sharpen a pencil with meticulous care, his dark eyes behind their glasses apparently intent on the task in hand. But the more discerning of his patients, and every nurse who had served on his cases, could have told you that Doctor Willis always saw most when he ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence

... receives the sacrament with consciousness of sin, by receiving it unworthily despises the sacrament, not in itself, but in its use. Hence the Apostle (1 Cor. 11:29) in assigning the cause of this sin, says, "not discerning the body of the Lord," that is, not distinguishing it from other food: and this is what he does who disbelieves Christ's ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... begins what is known as the Timourid age—the age beloved above all others by discerning connoisseurs—and it is tempting to assign to this famous period the illustrations in a manuscript belonging to Mr. Herramaneck, now in the possession of Mr. Arthur Ruck, from which are drawn the paintings reproduced on Plate I. This temptation is strengthened ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... not so much surprise her, but I never Trust my own eyes in these discoveries. They need a woman's more discerning glance. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... insanity was in the evil temper of the man before he roused our notice by his ravings. RITSON, the late antiquary of poetry (not to call him poetical), amazed the world by his vituperative railing at two authors of the finest taste in poetry, Warton and Percy; he carried criticism, as the discerning few had first surmised, to insanity itself; the character before us only ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... family of a San Francisco citizen as a lamb, who, unless bought as a playmate for the children, would inevitably pass into the butcher's hands. A combination of refined sensibility and urban ignorance of nature prevented them from discerning certain glaring facts that betrayed his caprid origin. So a ribbon was duly tied round his neck, and in pleasing emulation of the legendary "Mary," he was taken to school by the confiding children. Here, alas the fraud was discovered, and history was reversed by his being ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... you'd come. I've a headache, and I want to ride it off, if I can." Billy took off his cap, and brushed away his hair, with a little weary gesture which went to Theodora's heart. She was not discerning enough to discover that Billy's headache had developed under the inspiration of the moment, so sure was he that this was the most certain method of bringing his friend to do ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray

... of celestial type Wherein e'en mortals may discerning see, If they with steady perseverance seek, The will ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby

... [Footnote: 31] I would patiently go round and round the subject, and survey it minutely in every possible aspect. Sir, if I were capable of engaging you to an equal attention, I would state that, as far as I am capable of discerning, there are but three ways [Footnote: 32] of proceeding relative to this stubborn spirit which prevails in your Colonies, and disturbs your government. These are—to change that spirit, as inconvenient, by removing the causes; to prosecute it as ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke

... sight of the grand old house. The dog knew her by this time and she did not fear him. She found the housekeeper busy with some sewing and glad to welcome her. Mrs. Jersey was that always. To-day she looked a little closer than usual at her visitor, discerning that Dolly's mind was not just in its wonted poise. And besides, she loved to ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... matter is the least authentic. His points will be most effectively made where there is the least necessity to make them. Mr Kipling, writing as a soldier, is more a soldier than any soldier who ever lived. Thereby the discerning reader will infer that Mr Kipling was not born to write as a soldier. He will know that Mr Kipling is not profoundly and instinctively an atavistic prophet, because his atavism is more atavistic than the atavism of the first man who ever was ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer

... Certificates, as has been done in the Eastern States. This might have been too harsh a Remedy. They have left it in the Option of the Possessors to receive either such Certificates or new Bills. This is the obvious Intention of their Resolutions on the Subject. The Wish of every discerning honest Man must be as obvious, viz that as many of the Bills may sink in the Loan Offices as the People can possibly spare, and as soon as possible. I think therefore you have judgd right of their Views. It would be an Act of Charity and ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... recollect the proper reply at the moment it is wanted, and most men feel abashed, when a direct question is put to them to which they know they are not to return a direct answer, many will stammer and feel confused, will perhaps insinuate a falshood, while at the same time their manner to a discerning eye will, in spite of all their precautions, disclose the ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... are not difficult to find; for the Remarks is both intrinsically and historically an important piece of criticism. It is still worth reading for more than one passage of discerning analysis and apt comment on scene, speech, or character, and for certain not unfruitful excursions into the field of general aesthetics; while historically it is a sort of landmark in Shakespearian literature. Standing chronologically ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous

... small brothers are least easily handled, and had steered them through to the office-boy age without mishap, put her extremely high in the class of gifted amateurs. Mamie was accordingly given a trial, and survived it triumphantly. William Bannister, that discerning youth, took to her at once. Kirk liked the neat way she moved about the studio, his heart being still sore at the performance of one of her predecessors, who had upset and put a substantial foot through his masterpiece, that same "Ariadne in Naxos" which Lora ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... highly respected in Worcester, both as a man of honor and a man of wealth; consequently, every possible attention was paid to Theo, who was petted and admired, until she began to wonder why neither Maggie nor yet her all-discerning grandmother had discovered how charming and ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... in a pretty pickle! The world is wondrous fickle; But lately it would stickle For Progress by Exam. And now, in Trade and Learning, Against me they seem turning, Deliberately discerning ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various

... considered all women stupid and insignificant except those whom he was sentimentally in love with (as he was now in love with Grabetz), and such women he considered to be exceptions, whose merits he alone was capable of discerning. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... discerning public does judge a merchant's stock by the way he treats it, so that the store with New Way Wardrobes as a feature is not only the most progressive store, but in practically every instance the most prosperous in the clothing trade of ...
— Sam Lambert and the New Way Store - A Book for Clothiers and Their Clerks • Unknown

... a flag-ship in her day, the home of an admiral and his staff. She carried seventy-four guns, was easily obedient to her swift sail, and had a reputation for gallantry. From the first hour on board, Dyck Calhoun had fitted in; with a discerning eye he had understood the seamen's needs and the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... complained the anxious missionaries, "as the enemy uses all his ingenuity to blind the poor people, and knows how to employ their fear and distress to harden their hearts, and to prevent them from discerning their sins and repenting. It appears as if he exerted every power to destroy this little congregation, but we hope that God will shortly bruise Satan under our feet, and not ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous

... followed Farfrae appeared only conscious of her; to have passed from perception of Elizabeth into a brighter sphere of existence than she appertained to. Lucetta, discerning that he was much mixed that day, partly in his mercantile mood and partly in his romantic one, ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... post to post, from hogan to mesa, and back to his shanty again, always with the thought of her companionship, and found it sweet. Never had he been less cheery when he met his friends, though there was a quiet dignity, a tender reserve behind it all that a few discerning ones perceived. They said at the Fort that he was losing flesh, but if so, he was gaining muscle. His lean brown arms were never stronger, and his fine strong face was never sad when any one was by. It was only in the night-time alone upon the moonlit desert, ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill

... let us hear the voice of Sovereign Authority which uses its enemies for its purposes, and is never loftier than when it is most lowly, whose Cross is His throne of glory, whose exaltation is His deepest humiliation, and let us hear a love which, discerning each of us through all the ages and the crowds, went willingly to the Cross because He willed that He should ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... felt. The girls had been sitting with every muscle rigid. Now, they relaxed and a buzz of laughter and talk began. Berenice was far more discerning than the other girls there. Something in Helen's ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird

... regards the generality of minds; but to overcome this difficulty, when one has a mind eager for emotion, variable, with width and depth capable of discerning simultaneously the for and against of every thing, and thus being necessarily exposed to perplexity of choice, it is surely marvellous if a mind so constituted be also constant. Now, Lord Byron personified this marvel. In him ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... great powers of penetration, and not being sufficiently discerning to distinguish between the love of reading and the love of study, she concluded, from seeing me often with a book in my hand, that I was quite a studious character. Aunt Henshaw remained a week or two; and ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman

... then cautiously crept away. They proceeded onward until they found themselves near a junction of cross-roads. Arrived at this junction, matters looked serious. Unlike mariners, they had no compass; unlike Indians, they were inexpert at discerning a trail; and what was more appalling, they distinctly saw reared up against the moonlit sky—a gallows! Our two friends approached this object very cautiously. It was not an unusual thing to hang spies, and not unfrequently those mistaken for spies, but to hang them on a regularly ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... Odious in judgment of posterity, Are more contemn'd as dying sepulchres, Than ta'en for living monuments. We then Make here our suit, alike to gods and men; The one, until the period of our race, To inspire us with a free and quiet mind, Discerning both divine and human laws; The other, to vouchsafe us after death, An honourable mention, and fair praise, To accompany our actions and our name: The rest of greatness princes may command, And, therefore, may neglect; only, a long, A lasting, high, and ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... Baudelaire, and consumed opium with the hope that they might see and record visions. But a commonplace brain under the influence of opium or hasheesh has commonplace dreams. To few is accorded by nature (or by his satanic majesty) the dangerous privilege of discerning la-bas, those visions described by De Quincey, Poe, or De Nerval. Alfred Kubin has doubtless experienced the rapture of the initiate. There is a certain plate in which a figure rushes down the secret narrow pathway zigzagging from the still stars to the bottommost pit of hell, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... regarded him with awe and veneration. The youth had been taught by his parent to note the faults and inconsistencies of his character; but these had not rendered him insensible to the talents which had commanded even that discerning parent's respect and admiration. It was this personage, for some years the hanger-on at the bank, and the traveller and negotiator of many things for Allcraft senior, whose name suggested to Michael the means of providing against the encroachments of his future ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... reserved: she was timid to excess, and shrunk from public notice into the society of her mother and sister. There was a feeling abroad in the neighborhood that she was "not quite right," but the few who were more discerning, shook their heads, and observed, "Right, she was not, poor thing, but it was not want of sense; she had more of that ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... his attention to external things, he has acquired other relations with the world, other forms of interest; these are no longer merely those primitive ones which are bound up with a species of primordial instinct, but have become a discerning interest, based upon the conquests of ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... or its representation or equivalent, has been, during many centuries, the sole medium through which the majority of mankind have supplied their wants, or ministered to their luxuries. It is high time that a sage should arise to expound how the discerning few—those who have the wit and the will (both must concur to the great end) may live—LIVE—not like him who buys and balances himself by the book of the groveller who wrote "How to Live upon Fifty Pounds a Year"—(O shame to manhood!)—but live, I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various

... lamented son of our beloved and glorious Master, whom neither I nor any better man can ever praise and thank and glorify enough, belongs all the credit of discerning for himself and discovering for us all the truth that Julius Caesar is at all points equally like the greatest works of Shakespeare's middle period and unlike the works of his last. It is in the main a play belonging ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... be too happy to profit by the taste of so discerning a person; but it is cruel in you, Duke, not to feign a little jealousy,—a little reluctance to introduce so formidable ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... congenial intellect;—faithful and loving to her and she to him, amid all the crimes of their following years;—pious with exceeding devotion and orthodoxy, and yet with a piety utterly divorced from, unconscious of, the commonest morality;—discerning and using the greatest men, Belisarius and Narses for example, and throwing them away again, surely not in weak caprice, whenever they served him too well;—conquering Persians, Vandals, Goths; all but re-conquering, in fact, the carcase Roman Empire;—and ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... let me see if there is anything in my speculations which promises advantage to men of affairs. In you, dear friend—such is my confidence in your abilities, and such the part which becomes you—I look for a sympathising and discerning[1] critic of the several parts of my treatise. For that was a just remark of his who pronounced that the points in which we resemble the divine nature are ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus

... profession. I refer to Laurence Macdonald, who for some time wrought as a common mason, but who showed a strong genius for sculpture. The first piece of work of that kind that he did was the family coat-of-arms of Garvock House. Mrs Oliphant discerning his rising genius in this direction, took him to the Continent when the Gask family removed there in 1822, to afford him better opportunity for the cultivation of this art. He ultimately settled in Rome, and became ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... to the occupier of the soil; though in the present case it would be too easy to prove that melancholy fact.[46] I therefore applauded my right honorable friend, who, when he canvassed the Company's accounts, as a preliminary to a bill that ought not to stand on falsehood of any kind, fixed his discerning eye and his deciding hand on these debts of the Company from the Nabob of Arcot and Rajah of Tanjore, and at one stroke expunged them all, as utterly irrecoverable: he might have ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... again I feel as though preaching in the wilderness) it never occurs to you that there may exist some small difference between the wholly animal—ah—rumination of bovine minds and the discerning, well- apportioned leisure of ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... Perseverant, discerning, and persevers, discerns, occur respectively at pp. 43. and 92. of Hawes's Pastime of Pleasure (Percy Society's edition). The noun substantive perseverancediscernment is as common a word as any of the like length in the English language. To omit the examples that might be cited out ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various

... Thoughts that are born and die without a name, Or rather, never die, but haunt the soul, With sad persistence, till a name is given. These Vera heard, at first with mind perplexed And half-benumbed by the disordered sound. But soon a clearer sense began to pierce The cloudy turmoil with discerning power. She learned to know the tones of human thought As plainly as she knew the tones of speech. She could divide the evil from the good, Interpreting the language of the mind, And tracing every feeling like a thread Within the mystic web the passions weave ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... Long White Cloud should fail to please a discerning public, it will not prove that a good, well-written history of a colony like New Zealand is not wanted, and may not succeed, but merely that I have not done the work well enough. That may easily be, inasmuch as until this year my encounters ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... selling of these indulgences in Germany, and in paying their money the good friar Tetzel informed the superstitious people that they might release themselves not only from past, but also future sins. This pious imposition did not escape the discerning eye of Luther; he published, in 1517, a thesis, containing ninety-five propositions on indulgences, and challenged opposition. Tetzel was not silent on the occasion; but while he, with the voice of authority, called his opponent ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... 'stead of hair, And tack on limbs picked up from here and there, So that the figure, when complete, should show A maid above, a hideous fish below: Should you be favoured with a private view, You'd laugh, my friends, I know, and rightly too. Yet trust me, Pisos, not less strange would look, To a discerning eye, the foolish book Where dream-like forms in sick delirium blend, And nought is of a piece from end to end. "Poets and painters (sure you know the plea) Have always been allowed their fancy free." I own it; 'tis a fair excuse to ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... all the white winter evening, on one of those errands of discerning charity that occupied so many of her hours and thoughts—dangerously many, as we who loved her would often say, considering that she spent herself unnecessarily upon much for which others might well have acted deputy. ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... of the altar. No touch of sin would linger upon the hands with which he would elevate and break the host; no touch of sin would linger on his lips in prayer to make him eat and drink damnation to himself not discerning the body of the Lord. He would hold his secret knowledge and secret power, being as sinless as the innocent, and he would be a priest for ever according to the ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... it necessary—was it really necessary, Rufus?" whispered Garside, who alone had overheard, and whose paler face and tremulous figure betrayed fears which his swarthy senior partner would have scorned to feel. "This Carter is a most artful and discerning man. I am so afraid you have barked up the wrong tree. Was ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter

... other northern forms of civilization, and the more immediate power of the Church. That which was foreshadowed in the thirteenth century became in the fourteenth a distinct national development, which, as Symonds, its most discerning interpreter, shows us, was constructing a model for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... of pearly tints and roselit radiance, gradually filling that eager young soul to the brim with the greater joys of life? Or would it be fiery and terrible, a blinding, relentless burst of light, from which she would shrink appalled, discerning the wrath of the gods before ever ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... that he possessed abilities of a totally different nature from those which he actually possessed. I do not mean higher abilities, but abilities extending into a field into which his peculiar talents did not reach. Yet no one would have been sharper at discerning the worthlessness of the judgment of the old women had it been other than very flattering to himself. Who is there that does not know that sometimes clever young men are bolstered up into a self-conceit which does them much harm with the outer world, by the violent ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... without, one of my minor classics, is Idlehurst. Published in 1898, its author John Halsham, it has a touch upon country things, the penetrating, pitiful and tant soit peu condescending touch upon them of one who is both scholar and recluse, fastidious but discerning. He reads our earth, cloudscape, landscape, season, foison, man and beast of the field, with the same wistfulness which women who have known sorrow exhibit for children who have not. Reading him again, however, last night, after the long interval of fever and ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... Neither can a discerning reader accept the fulsome laudations of his principal French biographer, Roselly de Lorgues, whose rhetorical panegyrics and pious eulogies place its author in the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... Puritan. He is as full of gross words and sensual facts as a sermon of the seventeenth century. Up to this point of his life indeed hardly anyone would have dreamed of calling him a Puritan; he was called sometimes an anarchist, sometimes a buffoon, sometimes (by the more discerning stupid people) a prig. His attitude towards current problems was felt to be arresting and even indecent; I do not think that anyone thought of connecting it with the old Calvinistic morality. But Shaw, who knew better than the Shavians, was at this moment on the ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... so amiable; she sees good in every one," answered Miss Russell. "Annie is evidently not a lady, and I am glad at last to find some one of the girls who belong to the middle school capable of discerning this fact. Of course, we of the first class have nothing whatever to say to Miss Forest, but I really think Mrs. Willis is not acting quite fairly by the other girls when she allows a young person of that description into the school. I wish to ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... preached sermons on it, and the general public preferred to believe in the Mons angels rather than in Arthur Machen. Mr. Machen has shown himself an artist in the supernatural, one whom his generation has not been discerning enough to appreciate. Some of his material is painfully morbid, but his pen is magic and his inkwell holds many ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... not of great men (grands hommes) whom the Russian mind does not acknowledge, but of those rare and always solitary individuals who, discerning the will of Providence, submit their personal will to it. The hatred and contempt of the crowd punish such men for ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... article in the periodical introduces us to the first professional man of letters in America. It is "The Man at Home," by Charles Brockden Brown. Although unsigned, no one familiar with Brown's style could read a page without discerning him in the short snap-shot sentences of the story. On page 228 of the first volume three pages of the "Sky-Walk" are "extracted from Brown's MSS." The singular title of this unfinished story, which was afterward woven into the web of ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... visible upon the dusky bosom of the moving water. He was swimming up-stream with a leisurely movement, doubtless on the lookout for a place where he might land with safety, while on the opposite shore there was no difficulty in discerning the shadowy forms of the sentries, erect and motionless in the semi-obscurity. There came a sudden flash that tore the black veil of night, a report that went with bellowing echoes and spent itself among the rocks of Montimont. The water boiled and bubbled for an ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... worn out with dreams, A weather-worn, marble triton Among the streams; And all day long I look Upon this lady's beauty As though I had found in book A pictured beauty, Pleased to have filled the eyes Or the discerning ears, Delighted to be but wise, For men improve with the years; And yet, and yet Is this my dream, or the truth? O would that we had met When I had my burning youth; But I grow old among dreams, A weather-worn, marble triton Among ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... so wise, that he never erred in distinguishing better from worse; needing no counsel from others, but being sufficient in himself to discriminate between them; so able to explain and settle such questions by argument; and so capable of discerning the character of others, of confuting those who were in error, and of exhorting them to virtue and honor, he seemed to be such as the best and happiest of men would be. But if any one disapproves of my opinion ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock

... consciousness; that the greater part of human intuitional action is an effect of an unconscious cause; the truth of these propositions is so deducible from ordinary mental events, and is so near the surface that the failure of deduction to forestall induction in the discerning of it may well excite wonder." "Our behavior is influenced by unconscious assumptions respecting our own social and intellectual rank, and that of the one we are addressing. In company we unconsciously assume a bearing quite different from that of the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... upon his own account. He wished to appear well for Dic's sake, and ransacked his past life for points in etiquette and manner once familiar, but now almost forgotten by him and by the world. His quaint old resurrections were comical and apt to create mirth, but beneath their oddities I believe a discerning person would easily have recognized ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... over long years, her fancy went back, discerning how all things had worked together to this end. She saw how patience had ripened into hope, and suffering into joy. Not one step of the whole weary way had been trodden in vain—not one thorn had pierced her feet, that had not while entering ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... new. Amid a labyrinth of ruins they had no clue to guide their footsteps, in which the peoples of the world were told to follow. Only true political vision, breadth of judgment, thorough mastery of the elements of the situation, an instinct for discerning central issues, genuine concern for high principles of governance, and the rare moral courage that disregards popularity as a mainspring of action—could have fitted any set of legislators to tackle the complex ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... of at least part of it to-day. Why should we hold the brain-impression of his mistake, so that every time we look at him we make it stronger? He is not the gainer thereby, and we certainly are the losers. Repeated brain-impressions of another's faults prevent our discerning his virtues. We are constantly attributing to him disagreeable motives, which arise solely from our idea of him, and of which he is quite innocent. Not only so, but our mistaken impressions increase his difficulty in ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call

... unjustly beaten by unskilful rivals.[512] 'Tis you, oh, enlightened public, for whom I have prepared my piece, that I reproach with this. Nevertheless I shall never willingly cease to seek the approval of the discerning. I have not forgotten the day, when men, whom one is happy to have for an audience, received my 'Young Man' and my 'Debauchee'[513] with so much favour in this very place. Then as yet virgin, my Muse had not ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... established there, made his lot easier, and they combined against a lone Harvardian, who bitterly resented Harwood's habit of smoking a cob pipe in the library at night. The bouquet of Dan's pipe was pretty well dispelled by morning save to the discerning nostril of the harvard man, who protested against it, and said the offense was indictable at common law. Harwood stood stoutly for his rights and privileges, and for Yale democracy, which he declared his pipe exemplified. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... indiscriminately, what others choose to call by the seducing name of pleasure. I am thoroughly persuaded you will not fall into such errors; and that, in the choice of your amusements, you will be directed by reason, and a discerning taste. The true pleasures of a gentleman are those of the table, but within the bound of moderation; good company, that is to say, people of merit; moderate play, which amuses, without any interested views; and sprightly gallant conversations with ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... her old place in the room, the comfortable sofa which she had taken from Lady Randolph, and where Sir Tom, leaning upon the mantelpiece, as an Englishman loves to do, could talk to her in the easiest of attitudes. Jock, though he was not discerning, thought that Sir Tom looked aged and changed too. The people in general had a tired afternoon sort of look about them. They were not like people exulting to get out of town, and out of darkness and winter weather to the fresh air and April skies. Perhaps, however, ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... of the night is not ceremoniously pretending, "positively for this night only," to have an interest in the drama, but that he has an unusual and thorough acquaintance with it, and that he has a living and discerning knowledge of the merits of the great old actors. It is very pleasant to me to remember that the Lord Mayor and I once beguiled the tedium of a journey by exchanging our experiences upon this subject. I rather prided myself on being something of an old stager, but I found the Lord ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... how to discern what was illusory or misleading. The Master's answer was, "Give a foremost place to honesty and faithfulness, and tread the path of righteousness, and you will raise the standard of virtue. As to discerning what is illusory, here is an example of an illusion:—Whom you love you wish to live; whom you hate you wish to die. To have wished the same person to live and also to be dead—there is an ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... from afar; so the noise of these, smitten with swords and two-edged spears, arose from the wide-extended plain, from brass, from leather, and from well-prepared bull's-hide shields. Nor would a man, although very discerning, have recognized noble Sarpedon, since he was totally involved, from his head to the soles of his feet, with weapons, and blood, and dust. But they still crowded round the corse, as when flies in the stall hum around the pails full of milk, during the ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... who are now living. In fine the integrity of his life, the acuteness of his wit, and easiness of his conversation, had rendered him most acceptable to all men; yet he prudently avoided a multiplicity of acquaintance, and wisely chose such only whom his discerning judgment could distinguish (as ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... settlement in Canada. They amused the British administration with fruitless negotiations about the limits of Nova Scotia, while they were busily employed in the execution of this great plan. Their design, however, was no secret to the more discerning part of the Americans, who plainly perceived from such preparations that hostilities were approaching. In Acadia they erected a fort at Chinecto, to confine the British subjects of Nova Scotia within ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt

... advantages of life, but she regretted that Fate had not seen its way to reserve for her some of the ampler successes for which she felt herself well qualified. She would have liked to be the centre of a literary, slightly political salon, where discerning satellites might have recognised the breadth of her outlook on human affairs and the undoubted smallness of her feet. As it was, Destiny had chosen for her that she should be the wife of a rector, and had now further decreed ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... mean only to indicate that the resemblance to Michael Angelo, found by so many persons in such works as the Dante doors, is only of the loosest kind—as one might, through their common lusciousness, compare peaches with pomegranates—and that to the discerning eye, or the eye at all experienced in observing sculpture, M. Rodin's sculpture is far more closely related to that of Donatello and the Greeks. It, too, reveals rather than constructs beauty, and by the expression of character rather than by the ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... in the selection of his grandparents. His grandfather on his father's side was Doctor Erasmus Darwin, a poet, a naturalist, and a physician so discerning that he once wrote: "The science of medicine will some time resolve itself into a science of prevention rather than a matter of cure. Man was made to be well, and the best medicine I know of is an active and intelligent interest ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... child. The fact is that even the old Hanlin scholar Mr. Cheng was erroneously looked upon as a loose rake and dissolute debauchee! But unless a person, through much study of books and knowledge of letters, so increases (in lore) as to attain the talent of discerning the nature of things, and the vigour of mind to fathom the Taoist reason as well as to comprehend the first principle, he is not in a position ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... perfect ideal, the most exquisite, the most beautiful and the most lovable creature ever endowed with form and sent into the world by the powers of good. He believed all this in his heart, with the certainty of absolute knowledge. But he was quite incapable of discerning the motives of her conduct towards him, and when he tried to understand them, it was not his heart that felt, but his reason that argued, having very little knowledge and no experience at all to help it; and since his erring reason demonstrated something that offended his self-esteem, ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford

... mean an inert passivity on Jesus' part; it meant a strong, intelligent yielding to the Holy Spirit. It does not mean that His natural faculties of mind and will and heart were held down, not to be used. It means that they were actively, studiously used in discerning the Holy Spirit's leading, and in doing as He directed. And it means that so there came a fulness of life, an increasing life, into His faculties, mind and will and heart. Our Lord Jesus used all His powers in yielding to the inspiration and direction and ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... gaining some new conquest. She had a quick sensibility, which too frequently discovered itself in the immediate resentment of injuries or neglect. She had, besides, acquired the dangerous character of a wit; but to which she had no real pretensions, although the most discerning critic, hearing her converse, might fall into this mistake. Her replies had all the effect of repartee, not because she possessed those qualities which can properly be called wit, but that what she said was delivered with an energy, an instantaneous ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... the power of an implicit faith in the doctrine of Aristotle and the Schools, gone current in the world has ever been able to assist them towards." But it was not merely by variety of intellectual culture that Lady Ranelagh was distinguished. One cannot read her letters without discerning in them a deep foundation of piety in the best sense, real wisdom, a serious determination with herself to make her own life as actively useful as possible, and a disposition always to relate herself to what was sterling around ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... What would it do with sight in the murky thickness of a tree-trunk? Hearing is likewise absent. In the never-troubled silence of the oak's inmost heart, the sense of hearing would be a non-sense. Where sounds are lacking, of what use is the faculty of discerning them? Should there be any doubts, I will reply to them with the following experiment. Split lengthwise, the grub's abode leaves a half-tunnel wherein I can watch the occupant's doings. When left alone, it now gnaws the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... great pain that any of our countrymen should be cut off from the society of their friends and tenderest connections, while it seems as if it was in our power, to administer relief. But we trust to their good sense for discerning, and their spirit for bearing up against the fallacy of this appearance. Governor Hamilton and his companions were imprisoned and ironed, 1st. In retaliation for cruel treatment of our captive citizens by the enemy in general. 2nd. For the barbarous species ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... Turtle; If for Charity, the Sun in his full glory; If for Temperance, a slender Virgin, girt, having a bridle in her mouth; If for Justice, she holds a Sword in the right, and a Scales in the left hand; If for Prudence, she holds a Lamp; If for meek Simplicity, a Dove in her right hand; If for a discerning Judgment, an Eagle; If for Humility, she is in Sable, the head inclining and the knees bowing; If for Innocence, she holds a Lilie; If for Glory or Victory, a Garland of Baies; If for Wisdom, she holds a Salt; If he excels in Physic, an Urinal; If in Music, a ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... the living God. This varied and, much of it, wasted life, led the king, in his sober years of declining age, to write the Book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, so full of the profoundest knowledge of mankind and wisest counsel. It is said that the Scotch are preeminently discerning and intelligent, because they are so familiar with the Scriptures, especially the proverbs ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley

... danger, unshaken to his successors. The firm friend of freedom, he was on that very account the resolute opponent of democracy, the insidious enemy which, under the guise of a friend, has in every age blasted its progress and destroyed its substance. Discerning the principal cause of the distress which had occasioned these convulsions, his last act was one that bequeathed to his country a currency adequate to its necessities, and which he alone of his Cabinet had the honesty to admit was a departure from former error. Elegant and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... all the Northern States, old or new—Wisconsin furnishing the last example.[12] It may, therefore, be reasonably concluded that the "war-cry" was employed by the artful to inflame the minds of the less informed and less discerning; that it was adopted in utter disregard of the means by which negro emancipation might have been peaceably accomplished in the Territories, and with the sole object of obtaining sectional control and personal promotion ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... deluded saw youth and grace and beauty, there appeared to the eyes of the watcher horror only, and the emptiness of death. Simultaneously another woman's figure, and a weirder, rose up from within the chamber, and swiftly made toward the watcher, as if discerning his presence. Then, in uttermost terror, he fled to the dwelling of Hakuodo Yusai, and, knocking frantically at the doors, ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... self-sacrifice are stern, sad angels, but in time one learns to know and love them, for when they have chastened, they uplift and bless. Dimly discerning this, poor Bella put her hands in theirs, saying, "Lead me, teach me; I will ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... Unsurpassed in his mastery of English prose, he exhibits to the full the splendour of the English language in his speeches and pamphlets. Nor is his thought unworthy of the gorgeous attire with which it is invested. His power and constant habit of discerning and expounding the principles which were involved in questions of the moment, give him a supreme place as a teacher of political wisdom. In character he was pure, generous, and tender-hearted. His fervid imagination extended the area of his sympathies, and sometimes prejudiced his opinions. As a ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... people who had come to seek us; and feeling assured that our sufferings would terminate with the day, we pursued our route with renovated vigour and speed; when lo! our encampment of the preceding night came in view, the excitement of our minds having prevented us from discerning our mistake, as we might have done, sooner. The sun was still high, but the circumstance of the encampment being already prepared, induced us to put up there again for the night. It was a sad disappointment, ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean

... of equality, are not irreverence in them in the least, but mere blindness, stupefaction, and fog in the brains,[62] the first sign of any cleansing away of which is, that they gain some power of discerning, and some patience in submitting to, their true counsellors and governors. In the mode of such discernment consists the real "constitution" of the state, more than in the titles or offices of the discerned person; for it is no matter, save in degree of mischief, to what office a man ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... lofty idealism. His virgins are modelled upon the simple Andalusian maidens, sweet, timid, dark-eyed creatures. Their faces glow with gentle affection as they look wistfully out of the picture, or raise their eyes to heaven, as if dimly discerning the heights ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... literary contributions were confined to a part of the "Notes on Current Events," the portion of the paper that naturally attracted least outside notice, and was rarely singled out for praise. It is true that a discerning schoolmaster from another school remarked that these notes displayed "restrained strength even more remarkable in boys than the qualities of the other parts of the paper." I am ashamed to say we smiled and ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell

... I am the first and the last; I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore." This is what Christ is now. In this shape He is looking at us now. In this shape He is hearing me speak. In this shape He is watching every feeling of your hearts, discerning your most secret intents, seeing through and through the thoughts which you would confess to no human being, hardly even to yourselves. This is He, a living Christ, an almighty Christ, an all-seeing Christ, and yet a most patient and loving Christ. He needs ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... stream on each hand, And with to-morrow's light will bend Our steps to yonder strand. Here let us bathe, and free from stain To that pure grove repair, Sacred to Kama, and remain One night in comfort there." With penance' far-discerning eye The saintly men beheld Their coming, and with transport high Each holy bosom swelled. To Kusik's son the gift they gave That honored guest should greet— Water they brought his feet to lave, And showed him honor meet. Rama and Lakshman next obtained In due degree their share— Then with ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... it began to be apparent to discerning persons that Sir Francis's success as an Administrator had been rather apparent than real. All through the election campaign, as well as for some time before and after, the Tory party had sounded his praises with stentorian lungs. He had to a large ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... again under its own weakness, rejecting all exterior aid of pomp and ceremony, was so occupied in this inward life, that It fled from every intercourse of society, and from every cheerful amusement which could soften or humanize the character. It was obvious to all discerning eyes, and had not escaped the king's, that, by the prevalence of fanaticism, a gloomy and sullen disposition established itself among the people; a spirit obstinate and dangerous; independent and disorderly; animated equally with a contempt of authority, and a hatred to every other mode of religion, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... There is plenty of life and color abounding, and a diversity of characters—shop-girls, society belles, men about town, city politicians, and others. The various schemers and their schemes will be followed with interest—and there will be some discerning readers who may claim to recognize in certain points of the story certain recent happenings in the shopping and the society circles of ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens

... incurred, I have resolved that these four volumes shall be the heralds or avant-couriers of the Tales which are yet in my possession, nothing doubting that they will be eagerly devoured, and the remainder anxiously demanded, by the unanimous voice of a discerning public. I rest, esteemed Reader, thine as thou shalt ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... send you something which you will still have the liberty to reject if you dislike it. I should like to have had more time, but will do my best,—but too happy if I can oblige you, though I may offend a hundred scribblers and the discerning public. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... tribute of natural regrets to the images of vanished things, and the fleeting records of poor transitory man, there is often an overbalance of pleasure. But the merest stranger, who read the features of Sir Morgan Walladmor with a discerning eye, might see a history written there of a sorrow that went deeper than that—a sorrow not tempered by any pleasure. On ordinary occasions this was the predominant expression of his countenance—mixed however at all times with something of a humorous aspect, a half fantastic ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... prevent it. I glanced around for aid or hope; but there was neither. I could see nothing but waves, and hear nothing but the roaring blast. The shore was close to me, but the high waves, and the darkness of the hurricane, prevented my discerning even the tops of the trees. As the boat capsized, I kicked off my shoes and threw off my coat and waistcoat, and seizing the main-sheet, let myself down in the water, trying to find bottom, but there ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... alarmed at the news of Leclerc's expedition. "Every eye in the United States," he wrote, "is now fixed on this affair of Louisiana. Perhaps nothing since the Revolutionary War has produced more uneasy sensations through the body of the nation." No discerning man could mistake the significance of the expedition; the French troops would proceed to Louisiana after finishing their work in Santo Domingo. The retrocession of Louisiana, in short, as Jefferson said, completely reversed all the political relations of the United States. ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... day at noon, Mrs Jarley established herself behind the highly-ornamented table, attended by the distinguished effigies before mentioned, and ordered the doors to be thrown open for the readmission of a discerning and enlightened public. But the first day's operations were by no means of a successful character, inasmuch as the general public, though they manifested a lively interest in Mrs Jarley personally, and such of her waxen satellites as were to be seen for nothing, were not affected by any impulses ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... the sailor lover who is either supposed to be drowned or falsely represented to be fickle—in Mrs. Cameron's tale he is both in succession. When we add that there is a stanza from Byron on the title-page and a poetical quotation at the beginning of each chapter, we have possessed the discerning reader of all necessary information both as to the matter and the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... over him spreading out his wings, as they say, and always remaining in the same place in the air he cast a shadow over Marcian alone. And Gizeric, upon seeing from the upper storey what was happening, since he was an exceedingly discerning person, suspected that the thing was a divine manifestation, and summoning the man enquired of him who he might be. And he replied that he was a confidential adviser of Aspar; such a person the Romans call a "domesticus" in ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius



Words linked to "Discerning" :   perspicacious, perceptive, tactful, apprehensive, discreet, clear-eyed



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com