|
|
|
More "Discern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not see it in any other light. She felt the need of protecting herself against thoughts which had never until now given her a moment's uneasiness. Happily she was going to lunch with her friend Mrs. Borisoff, anything but a sentimental person. She began to discern a possibility of taking Helen Borisoff into her confidence. With someone she must talk freely; Olga would only harm her; in Helen she might find the tonic of sound sense ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... organizations in which, from some cause but dimly conjectured as yet, the blood once set flowing will flow on to death, and even the tiniest wound is hard to stanch. Was the lovely creature gone? In her wrists could discern no pulse. He folded back the bed-clothes, and laid his ear to her heart. His whole soul listened. Yes; there was certainly the faintest flutter. He watched a moment: yes; he could see just the faintest ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... in that same fit I lay, I have not to declare; But ere my living life return'd, 400 I heard and in my soul discern'd ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Noureddin; the caliph of Bagdad applauded the pious design; and Shiracouh descended into Egypt a second time with twelve thousand Turks and eleven thousand Arabs. Yet his forces were still inferior to the confederate armies of the Franks and Saracens; and I can discern an unusual degree of military art, in his passage of the Nile, his retreat into Thebais, his masterly evolutions in the battle of Babain, the surprise of Alexandria, and his marches and countermarches in the flats and valley of Egypt, from the tropic to the sea. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... good reason exists why we should persevere longer in withholding our recognition of the independence and sovereignty of Hayti and Liberia, I am unable to discern it. Unwilling, however, to inaugurate a novel policy in regard to them without the approbation of Congress, I submit for your consideration the expediency of an appropriation for maintaining a charge d'affaires near each of those ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the population, exclusively of that great section of it which unhappily lay outside the observation of any but a very few writers—whether poets or historians. In the people at large we may, indeed, easily discern in this period the signs of an advance towards that self-government which is the true foundation of our national greatness. But on the other hand it is impossible not to observe how, while the moral ideas of the people wore still under the control ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... of many of these islands have received baptism without the aforesaid solicitude and preparation, many sacrileges have been committed; and, as a result, many and great misfortunes have ensued, which we can now clearly discern, and yet ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... of no weight in the resolution which has to be taken. To have abandoned a path which I had selected from my childhood, and which led without danger to the pure and noble aims which I had set before myself, in order to tread another along which I could discern nothing but uncertainty and disappointment; to have disregarded the opinion which will have only blame in store for what is really an honest act on my part, would have been a small thing, if I had not at the same time ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... Majesties Royall approbation to our ecclesiastick constitutions, and conclusions, knowing that a truly Christian minde and royall heart inclined from above, to religion and piety, will at the first discern, and discerning be deeply possessed with the love of the ravishing beautie, and heavenly order of the house of God; they both proceeding from the same Spirit. But as the joy was unspeakable, and the hopes lively, which from ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... talk is kindly; any fool can point out flaws, said Goethe (who certainly had a great mind, whatever his heart was like),—it takes a clever man to discern excellencies. A good talker makes other people feel they are much cleverer than they had before realized; they are at their best, thanks to the listener who draws out the best side of them. It is delightful to be with some people—you are sure of hearing good talk—interesting ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... rays of the lamp it was possible to discern more closely the features of the black-jack exponent. There was a subtle but noticeable resemblance to those of Mr. Bat Jarvis. Apparently the latter's oiled forelock, worn low over the forehead, was more ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... contributes in various ways—by convincing those who are intrusted with the public administration that every valuable end of government is best answered by the enlightened confidence of the people, and by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority; between burthens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George Washington • George Washington
... leave this side of the tower and turn our eyes to the west. Here you behold in the distance a range of mountains bounding the Vega, the ancient barrier between Moslem Granada and the land of the Christians. Among the heights you may still discern warrior towns, whose gray walls and battlements seem of a piece with the rocks on which they are built; while here and there is a solitary atalaya or watch-tower, mounted on some lofty point, and looking down as if it were from the sky, into the valleys on either side. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... there was no sound, save the gnawing of a rat somewhere on the floor below him. On the walls he could dimly discern two or three pictures, and just above his bunk was a portrait of a lady. There were also several star trophies of weapons arranged at intervals; and at one end of the cabin—which was of unusually spacious dimensions—stood ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... when the glad summons was heard, 'Land in sight!' and was seated upon a sofa, with the child in her lap. The captain very politely handed his glass to the ladies who stood near him, and directed them how to catch a glimpse of the shore, which they were just able to discern. When they had all had a peep, he turned to the young lady whom I have mentioned, and asked if she would like to look. She thanked him, and rose for the purpose, first cautiously laying her sleeping ...
— Georgie's Present • Miss Brightwell
... so suddenly sought her society she failed to discern. Hitherto, though always extremely polite, he had treated her as a child, which she naturally resented. At length, however, he seemed to have realised that she now possessed the average intelligence ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... affairs of foreign states; and the real responsibilities thus existing for us, are unnaturally inflated for us by fast-growing tendencies toward exaggeration of our concern in these matters, and even toward setting up fictitious interests in cases where none can discern them except ourselves, and such continental friends as practice upon our credulity and our fears for purposes of their own. Last of all, it is not to be denied that in what I have been saying, I do not represent the public sentiment. The nation is not at all conscious of being ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... the old gentleman: turning his spectacles in the direction of the candidate for Oliver's premium, whose villainous countenance was a regular stamped receipt for cruelty. But the magistrate was half blind and half childish, so he couldn't reasonably be expected to discern what other ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... Under the light that was with every minute growing stronger, I could fancy that many figures were moving in the shadows; it seemed to me as though I were in some place where great preparations were being made. I fancied then that I could discern Marie Ivanovna's figure, then Nikitin, then Semyonov, then Molozov.... There was a great silence but I felt that every one was busily occupied in making ready for some affair. This was with half my consciousness—with the other half ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... plain. Nor by what means to reconcile him to it, Can I devise. After so many ills, This only misery there yet remain'd, To be oblig'd to educate the child, Ignorant of the father's quality. For he, the cruel spoiler of her honor, Taking advantage of the night and darkness, My daughter was not able to discern His person; nor to force a token from him, Whereby he might be afterward discover'd: But he, at his departure, pluck'd by force A ring from off her finger.—I fear too, That Pamphilus will not contain himself, Nor longer keep our secret, ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... bring forth the infant than they would otherwise have been. It is, therefore, much the better way to let the waters break of themselves; after which the midwife may with ease feel the child by that part which first presents, and thereby discern whether it comes right, that is, with the head foremost, for that is the proper and most natural way of the birth. If the head comes right, she will find it big, round, hard and equal; but if it be any other ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... as far as mortal sight can discern, is, in the first line yellow, in the second tawny, in the third scarlet, in the fourth purple, and in the last a mixture of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... social philosopher can act with such influences, sum up the forces which make them, and greatly help the result. The inference is that intelligent art can be introduced here as elsewhere, but that it is necessary to understand the mores and to be able to discern the elements in them, just as it is always necessary for good art to understand the facts of nature with which it will have to deal. It belongs to the work of publicists and statesmen to gauge the forces in the mores and to perceive their tendencies. The great men of a great epoch are those ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Ram Lal, the cultured votary of science, among the hills and the beasts and the specimens that he loved, was a very different man. He was as gray as ever, it is true, but better defined, the outlines sharper, the features more Dantesque and easier to discern in the broad light of the sun. He did not look now as if he could sit down and cross his legs and fade away into thin air, like the Cheshire cat. He looked more solid and fleshly, his voice was fuller, and sounded close to me as he spoke, ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... am I, O Lord, and hidden in the moss. But Thou wilt hear, discern and love me; though small, devout am I, ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... proprietor when the ground he treads has fallen into the power of strangers. He is lost if his crops fail to satisfy their claims, and the genii of nature give their smiles to him only who confronts them freely and securely—they revolt when they discern weakness, precipitation, and half measures. No undertaking any longer prospers. The yellow blossoms of the turnip and the blue flowers of the flax wither without fruit. Rust and gangrene appear among the cattle, the shriveled potato sickens ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... except the Duke de Choiseul. What therefore could I think of the visit of Barthes and the tender concern he showed for my welfare? My misfortunes had not yet destroyed the confidence natural to my heart, and I had still to learn from experience to discern snares under the appearance of friendship. I sought with surprise the reason of the benevolence of M. Barthes; I was not weak enough to believe he had acted from himself; there was in his manner something ostentatious, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... of December, the leaders of the Right used freely to say of Louis Bonaparte: "He is an idiot." They were mistaken. To be sure that brain of his is awry, and has gaps in it, but one can discern here and there thoughts consecutive and concatenate. It is a book whence pages have been torn. Louis Napoleon has a fixed idea; but a fixed idea is not idiocy; he knows what he wants, and he goes straight to it; ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... come into closer contact with the redman, Colonel, as I have a presentiment you will before long, never forget that an Indian, by right of his mode of life, is deeply suspicious and painfully sensitive. He has a keen sense of humour, however, and is quick to discern and laugh at the weak points of others, which, until you understand his language, you will be slow to suspect. On the other hand, he won't stand being laughed at himself or placed in a foolish position. For that matter, who can? Occasionally ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish 'twere done. Not till the hours of light return, All we have built do we discern. ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... he could have excluded them from the pages of inspiration; but herein he chose to deal with us not as children, but rather as men "of full age, even those who, by reason of use, have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." It is worthy of special notice, that where two or more evangelists record the same words of our Saviour, they are solicitous only ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... the early part of the day. The glasses were up, and so bespattered with the mud and rain, that it was impossible to see through them. Sir Henry let them down; saw a confused mass of carriages; and could clearly discern ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... He could just discern horsemen and a waggon on the far side of the plain, miles away, but their shapes distinctly visible with the glass in that pure atmosphere, as they lay on a distant ridge, the waggon standing out ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... yield to a necessitous person. So that it is not only true that our nature, i.e., the voice of God within us, carries us to the exercise of charity and benevolence in the way of compassion or mercy, preferably to any other way; but we also manifestly discern much more good done by the former; or, if you will allow me the expressions, more misery annihilated and happiness created. If charity and benevolence, and endeavouring to do good to our fellow-creatures, be anything, this observation ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... the money to be extorted by masses and pardons, "as if," to quote the words of an old writer, "God had given his sheep, not to be pastured, but to be shaven and shorn." This state of things had gone on for centuries, and the people like dumb, driven cattle had submitted. But those who could discern the signs of the times must have seen now that it could not go on much longer. The spread of education was rapidly increasing, several new colleges having been founded in Oxford during Wycliffe's lifetime. A strong spirit of independence, too, was rising among the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... I turned in. I went on deck for a time. We were cleaving through blue-black night, and on our right I could dimly discern the coast festooned by twinkling lights. Every one had gone below, I thought, and the loneliness pleased me. I was very quiet, thinking how good it all was, the balmy wind, the velvet vault of the night frescoed with wistful stars, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... afternoon? How goes it with those who have just received a new sense, or found a sudden doubling of that which they had before? Nay, it was a new sense, a new power of perception, able to discern what had eluded all their previous lives. The brook in the meadow had been to Diana's vision until now merely running water; whence had come those delicious amber hues where it rolled over the stones, and the ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... to pass, from the extremities of the earth to the highest heavens, even the weight of a pismire could not escape him either in earth or heaven; but he would perceive the creeping of the black pismire in the dark night upon the hard stone, and discern the motion of an atom in the open air. He knows what is secret and conceals it, and views the conceptions of the minds, and the motions of the thoughts, and the inmost recesses of secrets, by a knowledge ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... Bacchae, are made to harmonize with the terrible catastrophe which concludes the life of the intruder. Perhaps the victim's first discovery of the disguised deity is the finest conception in this splendid drama. His madness enables him to discern the emblematic horns on the head of Bacchus, which were hid from him when in his sound mind; yet this discovery, instead of leading him to an acknowledgement of the divinity, provides him only with matter for a ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... their kites!" And he adds, perhaps, some peevish ejaculation on the natural idleness of boys, and that pernicious love of play against which he is doomed to wage perpetual war. A man of sense will see the same thing with a different eye; in this pernicious love of play he will discern the symptoms of a love of science, and, instead of deploring the natural idleness of children, he will admire the activity which they display in the pursuit of knowledge. He will feel that it is his business to direct this activity, to furnish his pupil with materials ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... abdicates his throne, The government is now her own; He has a forfeiture incurred, She vows to take him at his word, And hopes he will not take it strange If both should now their stations change The nymph will have her turn, to be The tutor; and the pupil he: Though she already can discern Her scholar is not apt to learn; Or wants capacity to reach The science she designs to teach; Wherein his genius was below The skill of every common beau; Who, though he cannot spell, is wise Enough to ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... sensible that I must, like others, reach that term, it is yet at so great a distance, that I cannot discern it, because I know I shall not die except by mere dissolution, having already, by my regular course of life, shut up all the other avenues of death, and thereby prevented the humours of my body from making ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... of the portrait in the loan collection, and though he was so much older than the Florentine nobleman, he had the same thoughtful look. Of course I am not an artist, but I have always tried, in my way, to be a reader of personality; and it didn't take a particularly keen observer to discern the character and intellect in Mr. Vanderbridge's face. Even now I remember it as the noblest face I have ever seen; and unless I had possessed at least a shade of penetration, I doubt if I should ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... various consultants and duly interpreted by seers. They are selected out of a larger number as being representative of many different classes of horoscope, and they should afford students practical instruction in what symbols to look for, and how to discern them clearly as they turn the cup about and about ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... and the ground of friendship is a mystery; but, looking back, I can discern that, in part, we loved the thing he was, for some shadow of what he was to be. For with all his beauty, power, breeding, urbanity, and mirth, there was in those days something soulless in our friend. He would astonish us by sallies, witty, innocent, and inhumane; and by a misapplied ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... God made known to us the causes of our misery. We should not only consider the greatness of our necessity, but also discern the causes of it, and recognize His righteous anger against sin, to the end that we may, on the other hand, perceive the Redeemer and the greatness of His compassion; and as witnesses to these, His declarations, He adds the raising of dead men to life, and ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... far on their way; they went Over one bridge, each with armed men—not half A league of road between them—and had joined But that the olive-groves along the path Concealed them from each other—not from me: Beneath me the whole level I surveyed, And, when my eyes no longer could discern Which track they took, I knew it from the storks Rising in clouds above the ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... face, which was seen by a glimmering blueish light. I don't know whether the flame itself composed that horrible face or appearance; for it was so mixed and passed by so rapidly, that I could not discern it. My soul rested in its calm situation and assurance, and it appeared no more after that manner. As I arose at midnight to pray, I heard frightful noises in my chamber and after I had lain down they were still worse. My bed often shook for a quarter of an hour at a time, ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... Perhaps he happened to possess eyes that were able to see in such semi-darkness; then again it might be his absence from the fire had much to do with his ability to discern obstacles in time ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... no longer carried on in this quarter. It was only three or four rods wide, but the firs and spruce through which it trickled seemed yet taller by contrast. Being in this dreamy state, which the moonlight enhanced, I did not clearly discern the shore, but seemed, most of the time, to be floating through ornamental grounds,—for I associated the fir-tops with such scenes;—very high up some Broadway, and beneath or between their tops, I thought I saw ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... one single day Can I discern my way, But this I surely know,— Who gives the day, Will show the ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... and was saying good-bye to him and admiring him for the last time; while he lay, lolling like a sultan, and with magnanimous patience and condescension put up with her adoration. I must own, I glared indignantly at his red face, on which, under the affectation of scornful indifference, one could discern vanity soothed and satisfied. Akulina was so sweet at that instant; her whole soul was confidingly and passionately laid bare before him, full of longing and caressing tenderness, while he... he dropped ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... tasks of real life, hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought: Whose high endeavours are an inward light That makes the path before him always bright: Who, with a natural instinct to discern What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn; Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, But makes his moral being his prime care; Who, doomed to go in company with Pain, And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train! Turns ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... pleasure, or the intellectual antithesis of knowledge and opinion, being and appearance, are never far off in a Platonic discussion. But because they are in the background, we should not bring them into the foreground, or expect to discern them equally in ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... the clouds gathered over the moon, and the labyrinth grew so dusky that Theseus could no longer discern the bewilderment through which he was passing. He would have left quite lost, and utterly hopeless of ever again walking in a straight path, if, every little while, he had not been conscious of a gentle ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of this book is to help thoughtful readers of the gospels to discern more clearly the features of him whom those writings inimitably portray. It is avowedly a study rather than a story, and as a companion to the reading of the gospels it seeks to answer some of the questions which are raised by a sympathetic consideration of those narratives. ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... triumphs unto Thee, we give Thee but Thine own. Enable us to see in the strength and grandeur of this structure the evident tokens of Thy power, bringing mighty things to pass through the weakness of Thy creatures. Give us grace and wisdom to discern in all this work the nobler uses it was ordained by Thee to subserve. Teach us to know that all this mighty fabric is but vanity, save as it shall promote Thy sovereign purpose toward the sons of men. O ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... and, between while, a noise like that of thunder or cannon, attended constantly, from the belly of the mountain, with a clattering like that of tiles falling from the tops of houses into a street. After an hour's stay, the smoke being moved by the wind, I could discern two furnaces, almost contiguous; one on the left, which seemed to be about three yards diameter, glowed with red flames, and threw up red hot stones with a hideous noise, which, as they fell back, ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... brother William was reduced to a certainty, and would become a magnificent investment for Stanley Lake whenever he might choose to purchase. Upon that purchase, however, the good attorney had cast his eye. He thought he now began to discern the outlines of a gigantic and symmetrical villainy emerging through the fog. If this theory were right, William Wylder's reversion was certain to take effect; and it was exasperating that the native craft and daring of this inexperienced captain should forestall so accomplished ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... right in thinking there were possibilities in the lad, but it was Silvia's influence that had developed them, for in the days when he borrowed soup plates of us, there had been no redeeming trait that I could discern. ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... apprehended as a simple experience. When the rhythm function is thoroughly established, when the structural form is well integrated or familiar, it becomes well-nigh impossible to return to the analytic attitude and discern the actual temporal and intensive relations which enter into the rhythm. Even the quality of the organic units may lapse from distinct consciousness, and only a feeling of the form of the whole sequence ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... general, and indeed the truest, maxim among us was, that those who possessed the least were always the readiest to give. The chief art of a beggar-man is, therefore, to discern the rich from the poor, which, though it be only distinguishing substance from shadow, is by no means attainable without a pretty good capacity and a vast degree of attention; for these two are eternally industrious ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... open window. He was so exhausted by his mental conflict as to be scarcely able to rise to close the window, and retire to rest. There was one hope, familiar as the sunshine to his eyes, but unusually feeble, still abiding in his mind for comfort,—that he should, sooner or later, clearly discern what it was his duty to do. All was at present dark; but this light might flow in. He would wait: he would not act ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... store for me at last. I had not gazed at the window more than a minute, calculating its height and other particulars, when, to my great joy, a female figure, closely hooded, stepped out and stood looking up at the sky. I was too far off to be able to discern by that uncertain light whether this was Mademoiselle de la Vire or her woman; but the attitude was so clearly one of dejection and despondency, that I felt sure it was either one or the other. Determined not to let the opportunity ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... to see this highwayman, were sagacious enough to discern something very villainous in his aspect; which (begging their pardon) is the very picture of simplicity; and the justice himself put a very unfavourable construction upon some of his answers, which, he said, savoured of the ambiguity and equivocation of an old offender; but, in my opinion, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... slavery is one of those offences which in the providence of God needs must come, and which having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those Divine attributes, which the believers in the Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it should continue until ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... then shall a man be able to discern them? Consider what I am going to say concerning both kinds of men; and as I speak unto thee so shalt thou prove the prophet of God, ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... shaky again, and looked at his tormentor earnestly, trying to discern whether there was any real knowledge beneath this innuendo. But Uncle John met his gaze with a cheerful ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... snow which sifted past the glare of his headlights, he could discern a sign which told him he had reached the summit, that he now stood at the literal top ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... curtseying, in some confusion, to Mrs Lane, whom her short-sighted eyes did not discern till she ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... problems in all work is to place things in their right order, in the order of origin and importance. This difficulty is almost insoluble when one studies the character of man. As we see him in operation, the synthesis is so complete that we can hardly discern the component parts. Inheritance, social pressure, excitement, interest, love, hate, self-interest, duty and obligation, —these are not unitary in the least and there is constantly a false dissection to be made, an artefact, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... the name of one child come to her lips and not the other? Did the old lady's affection, or natural acuteness, discern that Mr. Dillwyn was not drawn to Shampuashuh by any particular admiration of his friend Mrs. Barclay? Had she some of that preternatural intuition, plain old country woman though she was, which makes a woman see the invisible and hear the inaudible? which serves as one of the natural ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... of the proposal; we are opening the first lines for a great siege, we have to sap up to the advanced parallels, to establish our batteries, and at no distant date open our bombardment. It may be many months before we shall be able to discern where there is a practicable breach; but the assault will come in ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... has been occupied of late in service on Plantation Commission. The most important case is still on trial,—that of the stealing of twelve hundred pounds of seed cotton from Mr. De Golyer. There is a "cloud of witnesses"—a very dark one—and it is hard, as yet, to discern in ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... over; the boat rapidly proceeded from the land; but so long as they could discern the old man's white locks fluttering in the breeze and even until the boat appeared a speck in the distance, Nanna and Magde remained on the shore gazing ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... into rented halls, slum missions, canvas tents, and woods meetings to find a place to utter his voice through the lips of those who know and feel him. Just as there were a few who had supernatural discernment to recognize and worship the infant God, so there are now a few who discern the personality and operation of the Holy Spirit, and pour out to him their gold and frankincense and myrrh. Just as the people of Bethlehem, who had turned the unborn Savior from their door were soon made to wail by the king's order of assassination, so the thousands ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... nostrils, mouth. And there are other pleasures, those named of Aphrodite, of which the channels are well known. While as to degree of heat and cold, things hard and soft, things light and heavy, the sense appealed to here, I venture to believe, is that of the whole body; (8) whereby we discern these opposites, and derive from them now pain, now pleasure. But with regard to things named good and evil, (9) it appears to me that sometimes the mind (or soul) itself is the sole instrument by which we register our pains and pleasures; whilst at other times such pains and pleasures are ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... motives were much such as those of Undy himself; but at Surbiton Cottage, and with Harry Norman, he was still susceptible of a higher feeling. He had been very cool to poor Linda on his last visit to Hampton; but it was not that his heart was too hard for love. He had begun to discern that Gertrude would never attach herself to Norman; and if Gertrude were free, why should she ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... enough to ask him the question; but when he had drawled it out that he thought there was a letter for me in his bag, I quickly made him leave his broom. 'Twas well 'tis a dull fellow, he could not [but] have discern'd else that I was strangely overjoyed with it, and earnest to have it; for though the poor fellow made what haste he could to untie his bag, I did nothing but chide him for being so slow. Last I had it, ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... bringing his costly wares from afar, are there not laurels to be gathered as well in Ireland as in Spain? The author of 'The Bell-Founder', of 'St. Brendan's Voyage', of 'The Foray of Con O'Donnell', and 'The Pillar Towers', needs no prompting to discern what abundant materials for a new department of English poetry are to be found almost unused on Irish ground. May we not hope that in that field or forest he may find his appointed work, adding to the ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... sea. To show surprise is to declare ignorance—and the British and Dutch South Africans, after the manner of all superlatively ignorant races, have the profoundest contempt for those in whom they themselves can discern ignorance. Thus when the kindly eminence of a hill gives you a ten-mile view of some tiny townlet—a view conveying no inkling of the importance of the centre which you are about to approach—it is well to be silent. For the Colonial is surely more imaginative than the ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... violent emotion). God of revenge! inspire me to invent Some new, unheard-of torture! Is their crime So clear, so plain, so public to the world, That without e'en the trouble of inquiry The veriest hint suffices to reveal it? This is too much! I did not dream of this! I am the last of all, then, to discern it— The ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... just discern the faces close to us, a simultaneous movement began. Lights began to flash out in places all over the hillside. At first these seemed as tiny as glow-worms seen in a summer wood, but by degrees they grew ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... enforced. What they were made to learn was the name and use of every plant in their own country; the habits and ways of all animals; how to cook plain food well, and make good bread; how to brew simples from the herbs of their fields and woods, and how to discern the coming weather from the aspect of the skies, the shutting-up of certain blossoms, and the time of day from those "poor men's watches," the opening flowers. In all countries there is a great deal of useful household and out-of-door ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... many boys who had been with him at the preparatory school. He felt more grownup, and instinctively realised that among the larger numbers his deformity would be less noticeable. But from the first day Mr. Gordon struck terror in his heart; and the master, quick to discern the boys who were frightened of him, seemed on that account to take a peculiar dislike to him. Philip had enjoyed his work, but now he began to look upon the hours passed in school with horror. Rather ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... usual, in a failure to see that there is glory enough in both; in the art of highly-finished composition and presentation, and in the art of bold and striking creation. Yet Vauvenargues was able to discern the secret of the popularity of Moliere, and the foundation of the common opinion that no other dramatist had carried his own kind of art so far as Moliere had carried his; 'the reason is, I fancy, that he is more natural than any of the others, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... sustainers of every written statute; these they be which will bear chief sway in such matters as these, when all licensing will be easily eluded. Impunity and remissness, for certain, are the bane of a commonwealth; but here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... character of a hula was determined to some extent by the nature of the musical instrument that was its accompaniment. In the hula puili it certainly seems as if one could discern the influence of the rude, but effective, instrument that was its musical adjunct. This instrument, the puili (fig. 1), consisted of a section of bamboo from which one node with its diaphragm had been removed and the hollow joint at that end split up for ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... I spent my time equally between the two places. I became furiously interested in the work, for it has ever been my happy fortune to be intent on whatever I might be doing at the moment. I think I served my uncle well, for I had much of the merchant's aptitude, and the eye to discern far-away profits. He liked my boldness, for I was impatient of the rule-of-thumb ways of some of our fellow-traders. "We are dealing with new lands," I would say, "and there is need of new plans. It pays to think in trading as much as in statecraft," There were plenty ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... the inner harmony which Thoreau's admirers see, and discern only queer paradoxes and extravagances of statement where the others hear the voice of nature's oracle. With most literary men, the power or disposition of those who know or understand their writings is in some degree a matter of literary culture. It is hardly so in the case ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... to be carefully weeded out from the list of examples. The student of such a subject needs an inexhaustible fund of patience and steady perseverance, but if he goes on long enough he will begin dimly to discern order behind the chaos, and will gradually get some idea of the great laws under which the whole ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... Country, there cannot be any thing in a Minister worse than a desponding spirit and the lack of confidence in a good cause. If Lord G. and Mr. Ponsonby think that the privilege allowed to opposition-manoeuvering justifies them in speaking as they do, they are sadly mistaken and do not discern what is becoming the times; but if they sincerely believe in the omnipotence of Buonaparte upon the Continent, they are the dupes of their own fears and the slaves of their own ignorance. Do not deem me presumptuous when I say that it is pitiable to hear Lord Grenville talking ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... music in itself, and possessed fairly musical ears. They were able to retain and repeat melodies quite foreign to them. Their hearing was acute enough to discern, with a little practice, even small intervals, and they could fairly accurately hit a note which was sung to them. They had flexible voices, quite soft and musical, ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... requirements of the pieces of wood that are pushed on below them: each of which pieces is to be an oar, and is roughly adapted to that purpose before it takes its final leave of far-off forests, and sails for England. Likewise I discern that the butterflies are not true butterflies, but wooden shavings, which, being spirted up from the wood by the violence of the machinery, and kept in rapid and not equal movement by the impulse of its rotation on the air, flutter and play, and rise and fall, and conduct themselves as like ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... impressions from inanimate objects, and it has bothered me. Now I find my sensations analyzed and classified under the head of Psychometry, and it is a comfort to know that other people besides myself can discern an aura, and are foolishly wise enough to trust the impressions they receive in ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... not puffed up. Love is not bigoted. Love is not intolerant. Love is not schismatic. Love is loyal to Jesus and to all His people. If we have this love shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, we shall discern the voice of our Good Shepherd, and we shall not be deceived by the voice of the stranger; and so we shall be saved from both formalism ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... descry, view, behold, witness, espy; discern, distinguish, observe, note, notice, observe, understand, grasp; watch, regard, look after; accompany, escort; interview, visit. Antonyms: overlook, ignore, miss, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... law, and have also small beginnings. The best, according to evolution, is that which has the biggest endings. Now, if a present race of men, enlightened in the evolutionary philosophy, and able to forecast the future, were able to discern in a tribe arising near them the potentiality of future supremacy; were able to see that their own {100} race would eventually be wiped out of existence by the new-comers if the expansion of these were left unmolested,—these present sages would have two courses open to them, either ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... bound with her in equal worship,—arrangements as to function and employment would be of no consequence. What Woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded, to unfold such powers as were given her when we left our common home. If fewer talents were given her, yet if allowed the free and full employment of these, so that she may render back ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... think it must have been about the twentieth day of my loneliness—I had been asleep for some three hours, and in a kind of waking dream I saw a strange vague vision. A number of persons, whose faces I could not rightly discern, were in a large room. Amongst them was Thora, looking more beautiful than I had ever seen her in my life, and she stood pointing with an accusing finger at her brother Tom, at whose feet there crouched a lean ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... hung at the end of his rigid arm for a moment. As he lowered it, the blood spurted from his shoulder as if from a burst stand-pipe, only black and warm. It fell over my face, over my hands, everywhere. For a minute of eternity his agonized eyes searched my features, as if to discern whether I had connived, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... matter, for the roads were infamous, a succession of holes and rocks. As we were gradually ascending, the weather became cooler, and from cool began to grow cold, forcing us to look out for cloaks and shawls. We could now discern some change in the vegetation, or rather a mingling of the trees of a colder climate with those of the tropics, especially the Mexican oak, which begins to flourish here. Fortunately, at one part of the road, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... of those rich and hurtful dainties invented by man. The delight thus experienced is the glory of man, not of God. And the effect produced is the destruction of those delicate organs of taste which he has provided, that we may discern the exquisite sweetness of the natural fruits of the earth. By the same means, also, we destroy our health, and unfit ourselves for his service. 3. But, I suppose the apostle had in his mind chiefly the idea of acknowledging ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... Condescension to the Taste of the Best and Fairest part of the Town, who have been pleas'd to be diverted by the following SCENES, will excuse and overlook such Faults as your nicer Judgment might discern. ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... of the common mind, and so thoroughly engrossing are the cares of common life, that only the few among men can discern through the glitter and dazzle of present prosperity the dark outlines of approaching disasters, even though they may have come up to our very gates, and are already within striking distance. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... is extended further backwards by the soft palate, V, which hangs as the loose velum of the throat between the nasal fossae above and the fauces below. Between the velum palati, V, and the root of the tongue, we may readily discern, when the jaws are open, two ridges of arching form, 5, 6, on either side of the fauces. These prominent arches and their fellows are named the pillars of the fauces. The anterior pillar, 5, is formed by the submucous palato-glossus muscle; the posterior pillar, 6, is ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... Further illustration.—He can discern the sea in every blade of grass, in every leaf, and in every flower. In the composition of his own body, he finds that ninety per cent of it is sea. He finds his heart pumping the sea through his veins and arteries as a vital part of the life ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... need to discern the claims of evil, and to fight these claims, not as realities, but as illusions; but Deity can have no such warfare against Himself. Knowledge of a man's physical personality is not sufficient to inform us as to the amount of good or evil he possesses. Hence we cannot understand ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... nothing but impenetrable marsh. From this particular inlet David Brown had discovered a passage to the land, and Ann pursued the new untried way boldly. Somewhere farther on David had told her a little creek flowed in where the eye could not discern any wider opening than was constantly the case between the drowned trees. Its effect upon the current of the water was said to be so slight that the only way to discover where it ran was by throwing ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... searchings of heart over the anterior question as to the constituency of the church. Were all the population of Salem to be reckoned as of the church of Salem? and if not, who should "discern between the righteous and the wicked"? The result of study of this question, in the light of the New Testament, was this—that it was "necessary for those who intended to be of the church solemnly to enter into a covenant engagement ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... presentment of two brothers," L. may discern a family likeness; but my inquiry was for the identical ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... wilderness, and perhaps to see some houses or people. But when I reached the top, everything, as far as my eye could see, was like night about me—all overcast with a gloomy mist. The day was dark and dismal, and not a tree, not a meadow, not even a thicket could my eye discern, with the exception of a few bushes which, in solitary sadness, had shot up through the crevices in the rocks. It is impossible to describe the longing I felt merely to see a human being, even had it been the most strange-looking person ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of the trees the little ripple on its surface, the freshening green at its marge. Then he gazed out over the vast plain towards the horizon. From his low position on the steps, the middle distance was hidden from him. Through the reddish tinge cast by the lowering sun, he could discern, far off likewise, the unmistakable signs of new-springing grass and the course of the river, for so long non-existent. From the gully he heard the sound of rushing water. It had been a roaring torrent just after the storm, ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... latter blame the law and the Union Parliament, and there the matter ends. We have read the "Free" State law which empowers the municipalities to frame regulations for the control of Natives, etc., but it must be confessed that our limited intelligence could discern nothing in it which could be construed as imposing any dire penalties on municipalities which emancipate their coloured women from the burden of the insidious pass law and tax. Hon. Mr. H. Burton, as already stated, ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... was not unreasonable that a burgher should form such an opinion of the leaders of his enemy, for the mistakes of many of the British officers were so frequent and costly that the most unmilitary man could easily discern them. On that account the Boers' respect for the British soldier was not without ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... this incident I decided to remove my dwelling-place to the top of a headland on the other side of the bay, some twenty miles away, where I thought I could more readily discern any sail passing by out at sea. The blacks themselves, who were well aware of my hopes of getting back to my own people, had themselves suggested that I might find this a more likely place for the purpose than the low- lying coast on which their tribe was then encamped. They also pointed out to me, ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... from me, and brought upon me a good deal of suffering. I tried men by my standard, and if they did not come up to it I rejected them; thus I prodigally wasted a good deal of the affection which the world would have given me. Only when I got much older did I discern the duty of accepting life as God has made it, and thankfully receiving any scrap of love offered to me, ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... old parts of Paris a few buildings may still be seen in which the archaeologist can discern an intention of decorating the city, and that love of property, which leads the owner to give a durable character to the structure. The house in which M. d'Espard was then living, in the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, was one of these old mansions, built in stone, and not devoid ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... unknown thing to discern its real nature; it thus consists of seeking reasons in favour of some supposition to the exclusion of other suppositions; it is not inference, but merely an oscillation of the mind to come to ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... votes, he will, like Mercer, end with them. The augury I draw from this is that there is a steady good sense in the legislature, and in the body of the nation, joined with good intentions, which will lead them to discern and to pursue the public good under all circumstances which can arise, and that no ignis faiuus will be able to lead them long astray. In the present case, the public sentiment, as far as declarations ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... extinct, or rather when it is on its very death-bed, after it had languished and shrunk and dwindled and flickered and kept on dying through a tedious two hundred years, when its sole remaining heir was just in one obscure court, from that very court we discern the birth of another empire, as dazzling in its rise, as energetic and impetuous in its deeds as that of Togrul, Alp, and Malek, and far more wide-spreading, far more powerful, far more lasting than the Seljukian. This ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... might do worth the labor? We cannot at times refuse a hearing to the question. Fortunately, it is easily made clear to us that the area over which influence travels is vastly more extensive than at first sight appears. The eye will not always discern the undulations of its spreading waves; but onward it goes, from one soul to another, far beyond our immediate ranks, and as each soul touched by it becomes a new motive power, it rolls forward, often with energy a hundred times intensified, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... lighteth every man that cometh into the world. And it is well that it is so. It is well that we begin to look upon liberty in another light than a mere absence of iron bonds upon our hands and feet; that we begin to discern that "He is a freeman whom the truth makes free, And all are slaves beside." We are pressing on to know the truth. We have grown weary of darkness, and are seeking the light. We should remember, in our researches, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... to know the trick how to make a many lines meet in one centre. Go, go, give your foster-daughters good counsel: tell them, that the devil takes delight to hang at a woman's girdle, like a false rusty watch, that she cannot discern how the time passes. [Exit ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... poised shield he bore, With quaint devices richly blazoned o'er; 90 Above the plumes, upon his helmet's cone, Castile's imperial crest illustrious shone; Blue in the wind the escutcheoned mantle flowed, O'er the chained mail, which tinkled as he rode. The barred vizor raised, you might discern His clime-changed countenance,[209] though pale, yet stern, And resolute as death,—whilst in his eye Sat proud Assurance, Fame, and Victory. Lautaro, now in manhood's rising pride, Rode, with a lance, attendant at his side, 100 In Spanish mantle gracefully arrayed; Upon his brow ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... first-class lawyer's brief. Indeed, I was on the point of asserting that you have a good lawyer's head on your shoulders, but prefer saying that you have a head which obeying the inspirations of your heart enables you to discern and appreciate the truth and extricate it, as well, from the entanglements of chicanery and fraud. Be assured, my dear Madam, that I shall treasure up your letter fondly, at once as a consolation and as a powerful support of the endeavors which I have been making for years to rescue ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... prophets for service and leadership. In the New Testament it is four times used of Jesus, each time in connection with His public ministry.[11] Paul uses it of himself in answering those who had criticised his work and leadership at Corinth.[12] And John uses it twice in speaking of ability to discern and teach the truth.[13] It is the power word, indicating that the Holy Spirit's coming is for the specific purpose of setting us apart, and to qualify us for right living, and for acceptable ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... and I displayed still the fine sense to keep myself aloof, to seek Miss Kate only in those ways that I sought her refreshing mother, she let me discern more clearly her faith in my firmness and good sense. To be plain, in reward for letting her alone, she did not let me alone. And this reward I accepted becomingly, with a resolve—the metal of which I hoped she would divine—never to ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... principle which here receives its proof, that man has something in him of God, that the norm of the true holds good throughout, can he know or care anything about divinity. "It takes a god to discern ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... hope insatiate can discern Or only guess some more inspiring goal 200 Outside of Self, enduring as the pole, Along whose course the flying axles burn Of spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manlier brood; Long as below we cannot ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... most justifiable expulsion"—he protruded his beard, and stared at me as one who challenges and invites contradiction—"after, as I say, your well-merited expulsion. The reason lay in your answer to that most officious policeman, in which I seemed to discern some glimmering of good feeling upon your part—more, at any rate, than I am accustomed to associate with your profession. In admitting that the fault of the incident lay with you, you gave some evidence of a certain mental detachment and breadth of view ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were again mingling their blood and exhausting their energies on a hundred petty battle-fields of Brittany and Normandy; but perhaps to few of those hard fighters was it given to discern the great work which they ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... He could still dimly discern the form, but it was so obscure that had it not been moving about, he would not have been able to distinguish it or make sure it was within ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... this victory was not quite so decisive as the conquerors imagined; for the patient being set, and the performer prepared with a pair of pincers, a small difficulty occurred: she could not for some time discern one black hair on the whole superficies of Mr. Trunnion's face, when Mrs. Grizzle, very much alarmed and disconcerted, had recourse to a magnifying-glass that stood upon her toilet; and, after a most accurate examination, discovered a fibre of a dusky hue, to which ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... every day brought a going forth and a returning, a mixing with the world, with men and with affairs, the affairs of Woolridge's. His married life had done one thing for him. It taught him to appreciate his life at Woolridge's, and to discern variety where variety had not been too apparent. There was the change from Granville to Woolridge's, and from Woolridge's to Granville. There was the dinner hour when he rose from his desk and went out to an A B C shop with Booty or some other man. Sometimes the other man had ideas, views of life ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... experienced, as he believed, the secret visitations of the Muse, and became inspired. "With sad civility, and aching head," I perused no fewer than six comedies from the pen of this aspiring genius, in no page of which I could discern any glimmering of poetry or wit, or in reality could form a guess what it was that the writer intended in his elaborate effusions. Such are the persons enumerated by Pope in the ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... slowly withdrew; My path I could hardly discern; So sweetly she bade me adieu, I thought that she ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... though not quite invariable, is the rule. Not merely are the subjects, in the majority of cases, distinctly "broad," but the treatment of them is broader still. In a few instances it is very hard to discern any wit at all, except a kind similar to that known much later in England as "selling bargains"; and almost everywhere the words which, according to a famous classical French tag, bravent l'honnetete, in Latin, the use of which a Roman poet has vaunted as Romana ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... that gave a full view of the sea. In the distance the eye could discern the curving coast of tiny Bongao; Kali was impervious to the summer beauty and youth of the sparkling ocean, to the charm of the dainty island so gaily chatting with the garrulous waves. He did not see the graceful, white rice-birds or the regal aigrets ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... reply, the pirate captain walked down the sloping beach and waded slowly into the dark sea. His motions were so noiseless and stealthy that those who watched him with eager eyes could only discern a figure moving gradually away from them and melting into ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... thou scan aright Dreams and visions of the night? Wouldst thou future secrets learn And the fate of dreams discern? Wouldst thou ope the Curtain dark And thy future fortune mark? Try the mystic page, and read What the vision ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... Mrs. Holiday found her fears diminishing rather than increasing, which was owing partly to the fact that, as her eyes became accustomed to the place, she began to discern the objects around her; so she went timidly on, Mr. George preceding her, and encouraging her from time to time by cheering words, up a series of staircases, which twisted and turned by the most devious windings and zigzags, wherever there appeared to be the most ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... the same conclusion from the case of Demosthenes; from whose letters it may be gathered what a constant pupil of Plato's he was. Nor, indeed, without having studied in the schools of philosophers, can we discern the genus and species of everything; nor explain them by proper definitions; nor distribute them into their proper divisions; nor decide what is true and what is false; nor discern consequences, perceive ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... much as is needful of nature in general. II. To collect in this way the differences, the agreements, and the oppositions of things. III. To learn thus exactly how far they can or cannot be modified. IV. To compare this result with the nature and power of man. (4) We shall thus discern the highest degree of perfection to which ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... head was up the companion-hatch. The weather was worse than ever. A thick driving mist formed a dense veil on every side, but I could just discern through it the sails of a large schooner standing directly for ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... Apparently our friend does not stand upon much toilet ceremony. The room has nothing more of significance to say to us; so now we come to the room's occupant. Our eyes have got enough accustomed to the imperfect light to discern what manner of ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... to their charge, the boys kept their attention to the rear of the herd, but the dust was so dense that they could barely discern the ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... they sailed smoothly, favoured by the western wind, and by the tenth they approached so nigh as to discern lights kindled on the shores of their country earth: when, by ill-fortune, Ulysses, overcome with fatigue of watching the helm, fell asleep. The mariners seized the opportunity, and one of them said to the rest, "A fine time has this leader ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... sort of perfection we are promised," Mr. Linden went on presently,—"that is the sort of perfection we shall see. Now, both glass and eye are imperfect,—specked, and flawed, and short-sighted; and can but faintly discern 'the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of him that is perfect ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... his brother as if for information, but without results. Lucy's pinched, tear-stained face added to his restlessness, and there was a note of insincerity in Uncle Gilbert's reassuring talk that his brother did not fail to discern. ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... Christian hearts. His successor, on the other hand, did really initiate the reform of the clergy, but so drastic and unwise were his methods that the result was terrible and disconcerting—the development of a situation of which only the Catholic idealist could discern the full irony; no less than Schism, the rending of the ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... his son, being all and always eye, could not but discern all passages in his dominions; wherefore, what does he but takes them in the very nick, and the first trip that they made towards their design, convicts them of the treason, horrid rebellion, and conspiracy that they had devised, and casts them altogether out of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... papers, but they were nearly a week on the way, and a bad conscience finds many a cause for fear. I was aching to be aboard. Saturday came at last, and going early down to the headland at the harbor's mouth, with my field glass I anxiously scanned the Bay of Biscay to see if I could discern anywhere on the horizon the smoke of the approaching steamer. Lingering there until the dinner hour, ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... never come about his house since his marriage. There had been something in Diana which had held them at arm's length; and although they had heard and scoffed at her fall, they had not the wit to discern that it clean removed the obstacle to their harbouring about the place as they had done before her reign and abdication. They might come and go now by day and night without feeling themselves too much for Mrs. Gervase Norgate, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... whole Court stood on the shore awaiting me. They saw the ships move forward in a large half-moon, but could not discern me, who, in the middle of the channel, was under water up to my neck. The Emperor concluded that I was drowned, and that the enemy's fleet was approaching in a hostile manner. But he was soon set at ease, ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... been for his Unitarian training and association with the churchmen emancipators. "Christianity is founded on, and supposes the authority of, reason, and cannot therefore oppose it, without subverting itself." ... "Its office is to discern universal truths, great and eternal principles ... the highest power of the soul." Thus preached Channing. Who knows but this pulpit aroused the younger Emerson to the possibilities of intuitive reasoning in spiritual ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... visible shape seemed nearly akin to man—revealing a divine humanity. His success was chiefly due, however, to the gracious speech of Isis, his sister-wife, whose charm men could neither reckon nor resist. Together they labored for the good of man, teaching him to discern the plants fit for food, themselves pressing the grapes and drinking the first cup of wine. They made known the veins of metal running through the earth, of which man was ignorant, and taught him to make weapons. They initiated ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... but the oars in the boat ahead continued their regular plash. It may be that Tregarthen had failed to discern the small sail astern of him in the gloom of the land. She lowered it quietly, stowed it, found and inserted the thole-pins, and shipped the paddles. Yet it seemed that she was in no hurry to row. She but dipped a blade twice to check the boat from ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... species; by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artizan, without ever meddling in any practical part in life. I am very well versed in the theory of a husband or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversions of others, better than those who are engaged in them—as standers-by discover blots which are apt to escape those who are in the game.... In short, I have acted, in all the parts of my life, as a looker-on, which is the character ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... me, and, with as much affability as possible (for she is no great mistress of affability), said, 'Don't be uneasy, dear Molly, for you are come to the house of a friend—of one who hath sense enough to discern the author of all the mischief: depend upon it, child, I will, ere long, make some people ashamed of their folly.' This kind reception gave me some comfort, my aunt assuring me that she would convince him how unjustly he had accused me of having made ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... even that of Othello's anguish; who comes in his affliction to think of others first, and to seek, in tender solicitude for his poor boy, the shelter he scorns for his own bare head; who learns to feel and to pray for the miserable and houseless poor, to discern the falseness of flattery and the brutality of authority, and to pierce below the differences of rank and raiment to the common humanity beneath; whose sight is so purged by scalding tears that it sees at last how power and place and all things in the world are vanity except ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... lower space with backward step I fell, my ken discern'd the form one of one, Whose voice seem'd faint through long disuse of speech. When him in that great desert I espied, "Have mercy on me!" cried I out aloud, "Spirit! or living man! what ...
— The Vision of Hell, Part 1, Illustrated by Gustave Dore - The Inferno • Dante Alighieri, Translated By The Rev. H. F. Cary
... John, quick to discern, said to Peter, "It is the Lord"; and Peter, impulsive as ever, hastily girt his fisher's coat about him and sprang into the sea, the sooner to reach land and prostrate himself at his Master's ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... Peter Vuticaro went in and certified the rest how the case stood with the keeper, and they came presently forth, and some with their spits ran him through, and the other with their glaves hewed him in sunder, cut off his head, and mangled him so that no man should discern what ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... writers of the same class have many injunctions regarding worship and sacrifice; and so complete is his reserve touching this matter, so important in the eyes of other Egyptians, that it is easy to believe that it was intentional. We may even discern in him a protagonist of the modern 'Ethical School,' whose adherents may be interested to find their views implicitly held ...
— The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni - The Oldest Books in the World • Battiscombe G. Gunn
... what, in the case of a man, we call personal identity. Which is the true, the actual Napoleon? Is it the Napoleon of the Directory, or the Napoleon of the Consulate, or the Napoleon of the Empire? At each epoch we discern a different phase of the man's character, and yet we are compelled to acknowledge, in the face of all the variations, that we have to do with one and the ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... Gerald had given her. It was very hot; all the windows were wide open, and the sounds of the street mingled clearly with the tinkle of the supper-room. Outside, against a sky of deepest purple, Sophia could discern the black skeleton of a gigantic building; it was the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... just as many other wives might have fainted; but to me there seemed no reason whatsoever why the swoon should be followed by that curious lapse of memory. The question she had put to me showed her mind to be a blank. I could discern nothing to account for the symptoms, and the only remedy I could suggest was perfect quiet. I intended that, as soon as daylight came, both women should be removed to the house of ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... little to be seen. He stood on the deck of a tossing ship of ice, in the midst of a high wind, a boiling sea, and a storm of snow; he could not discern an object a ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... to speak to every man, for on being recognized as a Sanitary Visitor the men would tell her their wants, and her eye was sufficiently practiced to discern where undue shyness prevented any from speaking of them. An assistant always went with her, who drove the horses, and who, by his knowledge of German, was a great help in understanding the foreign soldiers. They carried a variety of common articles ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... with the Parthians did not materialize. Phrataces heard that Gaius was in Syria, equipped with consular powers, and was furthermore uneasy about home interests in which even previously he had failed to discern a friendly feeling; hence he hastened to effect a reconciliation, secured on the proviso that he himself should depart from Armenia and his ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... What is your motive?" I asked quickly, trying to discern what could be at the back of this man's mind. How strange it was! Hitherto I had rather liked the tall, quiet, kind-mannered country rector. Yet he had suddenly set himself out in open antagonism ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... eager affection. Thus he was not only a philosophical historian, nor a mere technical critic; he was for ever dominated by an intense personal fervour. He cared little for the manner of saying a thing, so long as the heart spoke out frankly and freely; he strove to discern the energy of the soul in all men; he could forgive everything except meanness, cowardice, egotism and conceit; there was no fault of a generous and impulsive nature that he ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... seem too strong? View their plan of life and their ordinary conduct; and not to speak at present of their general inattention to things of a religious nature, let us ask, wherein can we discern the points of discrimination between them and professed unbelievers? In an age wherein it is confessed and lamented that infidelity abounds, do we observe in them any remarkable care to instruct their children in the principles of the faith which they profess, and to furnish them with arguments ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... harrying the country, and this enabled the Neri to talk of the king's forces engaged in legitimate warfare against those of Victor Emmanuel. Riding over the vast plains of the Capitanata, we would discern against the sky-outline the figure of a solitary horseman. This we knew to be a picket. Then there was no time to be lost, and away we would go for him helter-skelter across the plain; he would instantly gallop in on the main body, probably occupying a masseria. ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... come to the nub, we've ben all disappinted, An' our leadin' idees are a kind o' disjinted, Though, fur ez the nateral man could discern, Things ough' to ha' took most an oppersite turn. But The'ry is jes' like a train on the rail, Thet, weather or no, puts her thru without fail, While Fac' 's the ole stage thet gits sloughed in the ruts, An' hez to allow for your darned efs an' buts, An' so, nut intendin' no pers'nal reflections, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... he says, "with great desire and attention, of very many excellent, holy, and learned men, how and by what means I might assuredly, and as it were by some general and ordinary way, discern the true Catholic faith from false and wicked heresy; to this question I had usually this answer from them all, that whether I or any other desired to find out the fraud of heretics, daily springing up, and to escape their snares, and to continue in a sound faith himself safe ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... say that human glory is but dust and ashes; that we mortals are no more than shadows in pursuit of shadows. How mean a thing were man if there were not that within him which is higher than himself; if he could not master the illusions of sense, and discern the connexions of events by a superior light which comes from God! He so shares the divine impulses that he has power to subject interested passions to love of country, and personal ambition to the ennoblement of his kind. Not in vain has LINCOLN lived, for he has helped to make ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... room. It was flooded with moonlight, and as light as day. The bed was curtained, after the English fashion, but I fancied I could hear a slight rustle of the coverings, as though one were roused, and stirring restlessly. So light was the room that I could discern the articles on the bureau and dressing-table. A branch of a great elm, which grew at the side of the house, stretched across one window, and its leaves, dancing in the night-breeze, made an ever-changing pattern in shadow on the carpet. Did ever accepted lover keep such a tryst ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... elevate the soul. Maude Bereford was a proper companion for Fanny Trevelyan. Their minds were in harmony, while the latter acted as a propelling power to force the aspirations of the other above their common flight. Lady Trevelyan was pleased with this companionship. Though she could not discern the brilliant genius and powers which characterized the beautiful Mary Douglas, there was much to admire in Maude Bereford. Captain Trevelyan was kind, amiable and attentive. He paid every mark of respect ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... fugitives, far on their way; they went Over one bridge, each with armed men—not half A league of road between them—and had joined But that the olive-groves along the path Concealed them from each other—not from me: Beneath me the whole level I surveyed, And, when my eyes no longer could discern Which track they took, I knew it from the storks Rising in clouds above the ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... people as every friend to rational and well-regulated freedom must desire, would only produce the most lamentable consequences—would either terminate in anarchy, or in the establishment of despotism. Of the great public men of the day, Burke was perhaps the first to discern the true character of this movement in France. The letters which he wrote during its progress all show that he looked upon it with the utmost suspicion: arguing from the bloody deeds with which it was consummated, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... us, in their really frail boat, I watched from the taffrail the vain and loving pursuit; indeed, until the darkness and the rapidly-increasing distance shrouded it from my view, I did not leave my post of observation, and the last I could discern of the mourners still showed me the old man standing up, in the fixed attitude of grief, and the daughter with her face bent down upon her knees. To the last, the boat's head was still towards the ship—a touching emblem of ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... difficult to find a threat underlying these words, nor to discern that if the queen's fancy remained unshaken, and ill came of it, the King would hardly forgive me. Recognising this, and that I was face to face with a crisis from which I could not escape but by the use of my utmost powers, I assumed a serious and thoughtful air; and without ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... S. Leo took place but a few years before the Roman Empire in the West became extinguished, and political interests entirely submerged those of religion in the years that followed it. Dimly, beneath the noise of the barbarian triumph, we discern the survival in Rome of the Church's powers and claims; but it is not till the rise of another pope of mighty genius that they claim any consideration as important. In 461 died S. Leo; in 476 Romulus Augustulus, the last of the continuous line of Western Caesars, surrendered his ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... before their eyes like a flash, save when the steam concealed it fitfully from the view; the travellers could scarcely discern the fort of Chupenie, twenty miles south-westward from Benares, the ancient stronghold of the rajahs of Behar; or Ghazipur and its famous rose-water factories; or the tomb of Lord Cornwallis, rising on the left bank of the Ganges; ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... easily discern the Spina with one obelisk (not two, as described by Cassiodorus) in the centre, the high tables supported by pillars on which the Ova and Delphini are placed, the three spindle-shaped columns which formed the Meta at each end, and the four quadrigae ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... Bry little more need be said here. They both hewed out their own fortunes and recorded them on the pages of history, the one with his pen, the other with his graver. If at times ill informed bibliographers who have got beyond their depth fail to discern its merits, and endeavour to deny or depreciate De Bry's Collection, charging it with a want of authenticity and historic truth, it is hoped that enough has been said here to vindicate at least the first two parts, Virginia and Florida. ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... things; that is, his mind and will lie cross unto them, for he counts them foolishness; nor can all the natural wisdom in the world cause that his will should fall in with them, because it cannot discern them. ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... minstrel's malison is said). Then on its battlements they saw A vision, passing Nature's law, Strange, wild, and dimly seen - Figures that seemed to rise and die, Gibber and sign, advance and fly, While nought confirmed could ear or eye Discern of sound or mien. Yet darkly did it seem, as there Heralds and pursuivants prepare, With trumpet sound and blazon fair, A summons to proclaim; But indistinct the pageant proud, As fancy-forms of midnight cloud, When flings the moon upon her shroud A wavering tinge of flame; ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... conferred upon her through the verses of two great poets. She has rather taken it for herself, as Goethe said she was wont to do, in anticipating every gift. It is accordingly not in the Elegiacs of Ovid, flowing as a counter-stream to Lethe, that we may discern Bettina's gesture of immortal repose as a metamorphosed heroine. She is a type of the inspired lyrical nature, a belated child of the Renaissance. A graceful English song-writer of the Elizabethan period, Thomas Campion, who was as fond ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... thee lord of the best island in the world? Well, as thou thyself hast said before now, honey is not for the mouth of the ass. Ass thou art, ass thou wilt be, and ass thou wilt end when the course of thy life is run; for I know it will come to its close before thou dost perceive or discern that ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the lid, and, starting up, looked about her, to see what had befallen Epimetheus. The thunder-cloud had so darkened the room that she could not very clearly discern what was in it. But she heard a disagreeable buzzing, as if a great many huge flies, or gigantic mosquitoes, or those insects which we call dor-bugs and pinching-dogs, were darting about. And, as her eyes grew more accustomed to the imperfect light, she saw a crowd ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... masses and pardons, "as if," to quote the words of an old writer, "God had given his sheep, not to be pastured, but to be shaven and shorn." This state of things had gone on for centuries, and the people like dumb, driven cattle had submitted. But those who could discern the signs of the times must have seen now that it could not go on much longer. The spread of education was rapidly increasing, several new colleges having been founded in Oxford during Wycliffe's lifetime. A strong spirit of independence, too, was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... I have never seen in my life, I think, of legerdemaine, and such as my wife hath since seriously said that she would not believe but that he did them by the help of the devil. Here, after a bad dinner, and but ordinary company, saving that I discern good parts in one of the sons, who, methought, did take me up very prettily in one or two things that I said, and I was so sensible of it as to be a caution to me hereafter how I do venture to speak ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... external nature is necessary for our dominion over the world around us. The fixity of a large part of our nature—nay, of all but the whole of it—is a moral and spiritual necessity. For it requires but a superficial self-examination to discern the indications of what the profoundest research still leaves a mystery—that we are not perfect creatures of our own kind—that our nature does not spontaneously conform to the Supreme Moral Law—that our highest and best consists not ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... for days—an indulgence so rare and precious that it seemed a thing we could never again tear ourselves away from to encounter the unkindness of those Lorn mounts anew. The children watched us with an alarm and curiosity no way abated, beholding in us perhaps (for one at least was at an age to discern the difference our tartan and general aspect presented from those of Glencoe) that we were strangers from a great distance, maybe enemies, at least with some rigour of warfare about our visage ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... moment I could discern nothing. Then, gradually out of the early morning mist a huge, dark, shapeless object evolved. It was apparently about three hundred yards away. It moved, and judging by the subdued hum and a slight smoke which it emitted—like the breath ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... of Providence, and we must submit," replied Ben Zoof, calm and undisturbed. With this reflection, the two men silently descended the mountain and remounted their horses. Before evening they had reached the Mediterranean. On their road they failed to discern a vestige of the little town of Montenotte; like Tenes, of which not so much as a ruined cottage was visible on the horizon, it seemed ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... what notions have scarcely any use at all. Furthermore, we should see what notions are common to all men, and what notions are only clear and distinct to those who are unshackled by prejudice, and we should detect those which are ill—founded. Again we should discern whence the notions called secondary derived their origin, and consequently the axioms on which they are founded, and other points of interest connected with these questions. But I have decided to pass over the subject here, partly because I have set it ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... species, like the shagbark, when scions of the latter are grafted upon such stocks. At the present time I have shagbark grafted upon stocks of the pecan, shagbark, bitternut, mocker-nut, and pignut, but these are all young, and I cannot at the present time discern much difference in effect of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... one responsible for the hut to whom I could appeal, yet a glance within showed me an opening in the floor, covered as a rule by boards, which were now removed. There was a man in the hole, deep down and beyond it, in a tunnel, a man whose figure I could only just discern—a ruffian who was attempting to dig his way from the hut out beyond the wire entanglements. It was then, seeing there was no one here to support me, that I fired ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... lucid human judgment in him, too; loyal to facts, and well knowing their inexorable nature, Just sentiments are in this young man, not capable of permanent distortion into spasm by any form of injustice laid on them. It is not long till he begins to discern, athwart this terrible, quasi-infernal element, that so the facts are; and that nothing but destruction, and no honor that were not dishonor, will be got by not conforming to the facts. My Father may be a tyrant, and driven mad against me: well, well, let not ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... his journey,] [Sidenote B: rides through the dale, and looks about.] [Sidenote C: He sees no sign of a resting-place, but only high and steep banks.] [Sidenote D: No chapel could he discern.] [Sidenote E: At last he sees a hill by the side of a stream;] [Sidenote F: thither he goes,] [Sidenote G: alights and fastens his horse to a branch of a tree.] [Sidenote H: He walks around the hill, debating with himself what it might be,] [Sidenote I: and at ...
— Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight - An Alliterative Romance-Poem (c. 1360 A.D.) • Anonymous
... the non-edible supplies, the engineer's park will stir your imagination. You can discern every device in connection with warfare. (To describe them might be indiscreet—it would assuredly be too lengthy.) . . . Telephones such as certainly you have never seen! And helmets such as you have never seen! Indeed, everything that a soldier ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... that passed in our first dialogue. Now, my private conviction is, that both I and Philebus shall be cudgelled; I am satisfied that such will be the issue of the business. And my reason for thinking so is this,—that I already see enough to discern a character of boldness and determination in Mr. Ricardo's doctrines which needs no help from sneaking equivocations, and this with me is a high presumption that he is in the right. In whatever rough way his theories are tossed about, they seem always, like a cat, to light ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... people are more numerous than foolish! Howbeit, whether right or wrong, Will Osten had, as we have said, acquired the by no means unimportant knowledge of where to hit and how to hit. He had also the good sense to discern when to hit, and he invariably acted on the principal that—"whatever is worth doing, is ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... on the cheek, and an intelligence on the lips and in the eye, which made it seem that gaiety was not foreign to a countenance so expressive, although it might not be its most habitual expression. Quentin even thought he could discern that depressing circumstances were the cause why a countenance so young and so lovely was graver than belongs to early beauty; and as the romantic imagination of youth is rapid in drawing conclusions from slight premises, he was pleased to infer, from what follows, that ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... can collect 'by hook or by crook.' But wo to the poor mothers who have to mend the garments in which the onslaught has been made!—wo to the little boy or girl whose mother has not the good sense to discern, in her child's rosy cheeks and bright eyes, a compensation for the rags in the frock or trousers, which is sure to be the consequence of a day spent in harrying the shrubs and briers! But many centuries must our youth ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... looks and cutting words of her husband's relatives, and even the reproaches which they heaped upon his folly, with a widow's patience, and seemed content to remain a poor, broken-down, dependent creature. Miss Pillbody, on the contrary, was quick to discern and to resent, mentally, the uncivil treatment daily experienced by her mother and herself. Had she been alone in the world, she would have left those inhospitable roofs when the unkind hints first began to be dropped, and trusted to the cold charity of strangers; but she could not ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... and adopt no settled purpose. Did this proceed from the difficulty of wise solution, in so vast a problem, one could blame it the less. But thus far the greatest want has been, not of wisdom, but of fidelity,—not of constructive statesmanship, but rather of pains to discern and of honesty to observe the humbler path of daily justice. When we consider that the order which laid the basis for the whole colored army—the "Instructions" of the Secretary of War to Brigadier-General Saxton, dated August 25, 1862—was so carelessly regarded ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... well aware that you, sir, see danger ahead—danger of a delicate discussion of the difference our short acquaintance would have made to me if I had heard this morning that you were shot overnight. Pray understand that I discern in this nothing but restless male vanity, always on the alert to save its owner—or slave—from capture or entanglement by dangerous single women with no property. You would have been perfectly safe in my hands, even if your recommendations as an Adonis had been less equivocal." She said ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... is so dark that we cannot see her. All we know is that she is one of four shapes gathered round a small table. Beyond the darkness is a great ingle-nook, in which is seated on a settle a man of fifty. Him we can discern fitfully by the light of the fire. It is not sufficiently bright to enable him to read, but an evening paper lies on his knee. He seems wistful and meek. He is paying no attention to the party round the table. When he hears their voices it ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... Milton was peculiarly distinguished by loftiness of spirit, that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In every line of the Divine Comedy we discern the asperity which is produced by pride struggling with misery. There is perhaps no work in the world so deeply and uniformly sorrowful. The melancholy of Dante was no fantastic caprice. It was not, as far as at this distance of time ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that time forth are new men. As the inhabitants of many of these islands have received baptism without the aforesaid solicitude and preparation, many sacrileges have been committed; and, as a result, many and great misfortunes have ensued, which we can now clearly discern, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... stories of ancient fable for material for their secular drama they were without doubt quite unconscious of the importance of the step they were taking. It is only the reflective eye of retrospective study that can discern all the significant elements happily combined in this event by the ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... unto the king, How long have I to live, that I should go up with the king unto Jerusalem? 35. I am this day fourscore years old: and can I discern between good and evil! can thy servant taste what I eat or what I drink? can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing women? wherefore then should thy servant be yet a burden unto my lord the king? 36. Thy servant will ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... "This word among metallists is used to signify any metal that will not undergo the trial, that betrays itself to be adulterate or reprobate, and of a coarse alloy. . . . A reprobate mind, that is, a mind hardened in wickedness, and so stupid as not to discern between good and evil." We are quite familiar with the idea in everyday life. Ships, horses, land, governments, individuals, are being constantly subjected to trial, and, being found wanting, are rejected, reprobated. And what thus takes place ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... asseverated. "Don't I know?—don't I always and always know?" And, after a reflective moment: "It is a great comfort to be able to love the poses, and a still greater to be permitted to discern the true man ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... had increased greatly and there seemed to be signs of another rain coming up. No other place of shelter was in the immediate neighborhood that he could discern. ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... Yet night is to many a gloomy season. There is "the pestilence that walketh in darkness"; there is "the terror by night"; there is the dread of robbers and of fell disease, with all those fears that the timorous know, when they have no light wherewith they can discern objects. It is then they fancy that spiritual creatures walk the earth; tho, if they knew rightly, they would find it ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... on them, he might have counted confidently on rallying the great mass of the Persians to his cause. How was it that he did not advance on the capital, and at least strike one blow for empire? No clear and decided response can be made to this inquiry; but we may indistinctly discern a number of causes which may have combined to produce in the monarch's mind the feeling of despondency whereto he gave way. Although he returned from Egypt a substantial conqueror, his laurel wreath was tarnished by ill-success; his army, weakened by its losses, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... interest, meditate constantly on the divine instructions that Jesus has left us in the Sacred Scriptures, and on those also with which He inspired the pious author of the "Following of Christ," their most perfect commentator. Learn to discern genuine piety from that which bears only the name. Learn to distinguish between its object and that which is only a means to attain that object,—two things which are frequently and erroneously confounded, ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... to discern that he is of middle height; that his upper lip and cheeks are unshaven, and his chin smooth; that his hair is already thin, though he lacks two years of thirty; and that his complexion is pale and sallow; indeed, his aspect is familiar from statues and coins, many ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... on, and day by day he climbed the top of the nearest hill and gazed off to the sea, hoping to discern a sail, ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... wisdom can discern What best befits it; yet in love and zeal We could entreat, it might ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... few lines hastily, and handed them to Isabella, who, after repeated and painful efforts, cleared her eyes and head sufficiently to discern their purport. ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... better go to bed, for all my work would amount to nothing but loss of necessary rest. I am ready to show him triumphant evidence to the contrary, in the clothes, as good as new, in which his children are habited. Before I can speak, I discern a lurking smile in his face. My boy Will stands in a sheepish posture, with his back as close to the jam, as if he were a polypus growing there, and his life depended ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... taste of wine seemed more delicious. What a warm thrill ran along his nerves! What a fine exhilaration quickened in his brain! The shadow which a moment before had cast a veil over the face of Blanche he saw no longer. It had vanished, or his vision was not now clear enough to discern ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... in her hands her babe, and yet it was God! That picture means nothing to me as it does to the Roman Church; but it means everything to me, because I believe that every mother should love the God that is in her child, and that every mother's heart should be watching to discern and see in the child, which is more than flesh and blood, something that takes hold of ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... He still carried with him something of the hunter, something which came from the broad spaces of the Middle Border, and though his bushy hair and beard were streaked with white, and his eyes sad and dim, I could still discern in him some part of the physical strength and beauty which had made his young manhood so glorious to me—and deeper yet, I perceived in him the dreamer, the ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... That westward like a winged creature flies, Above a sea dawn-bright, and arched with skies Expectant of the sun and morning-break. The sailors from the deck their land-thirst slake With peering o'er the waves, until their eyes Discern a coast that faint and dream-like lies, The while they pray, weep, laugh, or madly take Their shipmates in their arms and speak no word. And then I see a figure, tall, removed A little from the others, as behooved, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... climbed like birds of prey, into the heavens to hurl death from the clouds. They lined up their guns, tier upon tier, almost axle to axle in places, and at a given sign rained a deluge of corruption on a country miles in front, which they could not even discern. The infantry went over the top throwing bombs and piled themselves up into mounds of silence. Nations far away toiled day and night in factories—and all that they might achieve this repellant desolation. The innocence of the project made one smile—a handful of women ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... through the intervals of the line, unlimbered, and went to work as if they were in downright earnest. The cannonade continued a short time, when the infantry advanced in line, and delivered its fire by companies, or battalions, I could not discern which, in the smoke. This lasted some ten minutes, when I observed a strong column of troops, dressed in scarlet, moving up with great steadiness and regularity from the rear. These were the Swiss Guards, and there ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a thing may be understood in two ways. First, as when a cognitive power judges of its proper object, according to Job 12:11: "Doth not the ear discern words, and the palate of him that eateth, the taste?" It is to this kind of judgment that the Philosopher alludes when he says that "anyone can judge well of what he knows," by judging, namely, whether what is put forward is true. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... objects of their displeasure; their peculiar sense of cleanliness rewarded the housewives with the silver token in the shoe; their nicety was extreme concerning any coarseness or negligence which could offend their delicacy; and I cannot discern, except, perhaps, from the insinuations of some scrupulous divines, that they were vassals to or in close alliance with the infernals, as there is too much reason to believe was the case with their North British sisterhood.[45] The common nursery ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... stood in for the San Mateo shore, and dropped anchor not more than a cable's-length away. A little wharf ran out, the bare end of which was perceptible to them, though they could discern a small yacht lying moored to a buoy a ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... in imitating the action of Hay-uta, though he did not raise his head as high as he. The result was odd. He was able to look between the bases of the trunks and smaller bushes, so that he saw a number of moccasins, without being able to discern the bodies to which they belonged. He observed three or four pairs, and the fringes of the leggings to the knees. The Pawnees were walking, but their feet looked as if they were simply raised and put down again, without advancing or retreating. Inasmuch, however, ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... popular memory. And whereas the letters of Keats disclose a mind filled with the sense of beauty and rich with poetic seedlings that blossomed into beautiful flowers, in Southey's correspondence we discern only an erudite man of taste labouring diligently upon epics which he expected to be immortal. The letters of Byron stand upon broader ground, because Byron was so much more of a personage than either Keats, or Southey, or Wordsworth. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... from day to day, My life and habits in every way, You might be taught a lesson or two That all through life might profit you; Or if you only closely look, This sketch may prove an open book, And teach a lesson you should learn. Look closely, and you will discern." ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... then, at this great distance, our human vision can discern that sight, why, pray, are we to think that the divine splendour of the stars can be cast into darkness? Rather will the following way of accounting for it prove to be correct. Heat summons and attracts everything towards itself; for instance, we see the fruits of the earth growing up high under ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... "pep." After all, if the old order crumbled, was it not because of its own weakness? Was not the fact of its decay the sign of some secret disintegration, of rottenness at the core? And if the new spirit could destroy, perhaps it could build as well. There might be more in it, he was beginning to discern, than mere lack of control, than vulgar hysteria and undisciplined violence. The quality expressed by that dreadful word was the sparkle on the edge of the tempest, the lightning flash that revealed the presence of ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... silenced her and set the boy wailing dismally. The boy was accustomed to howl without provocation. He kicked his mother until she let him down. By this time they could discern only Maurie's head bobbing in the distant water. Presently he clambered up the dock and ran dripping toward the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... floor. A second figure, rapidly taking shape as Anisty's, stood by the controller, braced against the side of the car, one hand on the lever, the other poising a shining thing, the flesh-colored oval of his face turned upwards in a supposititious attempt to discern the location ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... the slow stealing of aspects of reckless, indolent, animal neglect, over the delicate sweetness of the English scene: nor is any blasphemy or impiety, any frantic saying, or godless thought, more appalling to me, using the best power of judgment I have to discern its sense and scope, than the insolent defiling of those springs by the human herds that drink of them. Just where the welling of stainless water, trembling and pure, like a body of light, enters the pool of Carshalton, cutting itself a radiant channel down to the gravel, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... has made many a man who seemed to be sunk in sloth or greed or carnality into a Bayard or a Galahad. It may well be that this moral re-birth would never have been effected if the evils which provoked it had been less monstrous. Here, then, we seem to discern a principle which may be adequate to explain what all the ills of ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... hatless, his long hair in disorder and his whole body in violent movement from side to side, backward and forward. His right arm was lifted and seemed to lack the hand—at least, I could see none. The other arm was invisible. At times, as my memory now reports this extraordinary scene, I could discern but a part of his body; it was as if he had been partly blotted out—I cannot otherwise express it—then a shifting of his position would bring it all ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... had permitted only one religion, it had been too easily known; but when we look at it closely, we clearly discern the ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... the wall, was an oblong table which was bare. Above it, against the wall, was a shelf on which Frank could discern three or four big home-made ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... at once, and replying, "Very well, I shall come down," proceeded to dress in all haste, but to my horror, I could not discern a vestige of my clothes; nothing remained of the habiliments I possessed only the day before—even my portmanteau had disappeared. After a most diligent search, I discovered on a chair in a corner of the room, a small bundle tied up in a handkerchief, on opening ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... satisfied that it was but too true. On reaching the place where the cavallada had been picketed, we found not the semblance of a horse. Even the pins were drawn, and the lazoes taken along. Far off on the prairie we could discern dimly a dark mass of mounted men, and we could plainly hear their triumphant shouts and laughter, as they disappeared ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... called them; and it is easy to show that similar customs have been practised in many lands for the express purpose of ensuring good crops. In the story of the tragic death of the youthful Hippolytus we may discern an analogy with similar tales of other fair but mortal youths who paid with their lives for the brief rapture of the love of an immortal goddess. These hapless lovers were probably not always mere myths, and the legends which traced ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... While dangers seem her faith to mock; But highest point by her is found, She stands upon the swaying rock, Which seems unsteady 'neath her feet, And makes her doubt if she can stand To make inspection so complete, She may discern PONOMO'S band. The trembling rock and trembling heart Are firmly fixed, no power can move; But from its crest she must depart In search of him her heart doth love. She stands beside the central lake Along whose shores the war-whoop ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... through hers. And now the doctor was tracing strange signs upon the ground. The flames died down and only a glow remained, but he seemed to have no difficulty in seeing what he was about. Susie could not discern what figures he drew. Then he put more twigs upon the braziers, and the flames sprang up once more, cutting the darkness sharply as with ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... except the fact of my own existence of which I am absolutely certain. And thus I can accept no system of religion which is based upon deductions, however subtle, from isolated texts, because I cannot be sure of the infallibility of any form of human expression. Yet, on the other hand, I seem to discern with as much certainty as I can discern anything in this world, where all is so dark, the presence upon earth at a certain date of a personality which commands my homage and allegiance. And upon this I ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... brightest hopes. The golden shower of the heathen poets, in which Jove once descended, was but a little sprinkle, in comparison with the river of that precious metal, soon to flow into his coffers. But alas! the goddess, being blind, not only failed to discern his peculiar claims upon her regard, but was cheated herself! A shrewd Virginian dreamed the ticket which drew the hundred thousand dollars, into his own pocket; the manager failed, and thereby turned all ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... withheld me. If there was any one still in that room, he might come from it just as the servant answered my call, and a public discovery would be unavoidable. I was right. In another instant the figure of a man, whose face I could not discern, slipped out of the room, passed my door, and went stealthily ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... of a group of cases corresponding roughly with the so-called functional group of diseases, we find false beliefs about the some on a somewhat different plane from those about the patient's self and his worldly fortunes. We can even discern through the ruins of the paretic's reaction that his false beliefs concerning the body are often not so false after all, and that his damaged brain of itself is not so apt to return false ideas about his somatic interior as about his worldly importance and plight. There then seems to be ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... the other window, the boys could discern the bridge which they had been led across. The bridge spanned a moat, which at one time had been filled with water. Now it was a mass ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... groves of ilex, from a wall at the edge of the sea. And now Paul could discern the landing-stage, and the ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... aid of Louis, who is a child, and it appeared to me, who am acquainted with such things, that in the intelligent eye of the fallen king, in the nobility of his whole person, a nobility apparent above all his miseries, I could discern the stuff of a man and ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to me very quietly while I delivered myself of my message and of such embroideries of my own as I saw fit to tag on to its original simplicity, and though I thought I could discern that she was affected not unkindly toward my friend, in spite of whatever fault he might have committed, she did not in any way change color or display any other of those signals by which ladies are accustomed ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... been fulfilled; that half-century has passed by, and the great republic goes on its career of greatness, and no eye can discern the ultimate ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... perfection both of body and intellect and suffer deterioration neither through the rashness of youth nor the feebleness of old age, but are strongest because in a condition half-way between the two. Moreover I possess such a nature and such a training that I can with greatest ease discern what requires to be done and make it known. Experience, which causes even the ignorant and the uneducated to appear to be of some value, I have been acquiring through my whole political and whole military ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... discern a sort of royal command in your eye," assented Susie, feeling suddenly at ease with him. He was evidently a mere man, even though ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... not correct enough to discern what real friendship was; he loved only those who afforded him amusement, and despised all others. The Duchess was very agreeable and had some pleasant notions; she was fond of eating, which was the very thing for the Dauphin, because he found a good breakfast at her house every morning ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... really is, and how distant from perfection mankind are in this world, even in the most refined state of humanity. Such an intellectual feast they enjoy, who peruse the life of this great author, drawn by the masterly and impartial hand of lord Orrery. We there discern the greatness and weakness of Dean Swift; we discover the patriot, the genius, and the humourist; the peevish master, the ambitious statesman, the implacable enemy, and the warm friend. His mixed qualities and imperfections are there candidly marked: His errors and virtues are so strongly ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... of grace which the priest had granted I passed in anxious but futile search for some means of escape, every plan I conceived dying stillborn, and not the least of my miseries lying in the fact that I could discern no better course than still to sit and think, and seemed doomed to perpetual inaction. M. de Rambouillet being a strict Catholic, though in all other respects a patriotic man, I knew better than to have recourse to him; and the priest's influence over M. d'Agen I had myself witnessed. For similar ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... power to discern a sham, or a false pretense, exceeded that of any other man of his time, promptly responded: "I strongly suspect your information will prove groundless; nevertheless, I thank you for communicating it to me." He said further to Mr. Wood that ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... three at once; meanwhile the rest Stand fearfully, bending the eye and nose To ground, and what the foremost does, that do The others, gathering round her if she stops, Simple and quiet, nor the cause discern; So saw I moving to advance the first, Who of the fortunate crew were at the head, Of modest mien, and graceful in their gait. When they before me had beheld the light From my right side fall broken on the ground, ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... which reason vainly expresses its disbelief, as long as the eye of faith can discern physical proofs of its truth in the deep furrow which, crossing the mountain in detached portions, terminates abruptly in the lake; for it seems that when the two oxen were summoned by their mistress, they were ploughing in the field; and at their departure, they ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... the entire extent of McCook's disaster in its crushing force was revealed to him, he felt the full burden of his responsibility, and rising to the demands of the hour he was superb. Dashing from one point to another, quick to discern danger and ready to meet it, shrinking from no personal exposure, dispatching his staff on the gallop, hurrying troops into position, massing the artillery and forming his new lines on grounds of his own choosing, confident of ultimate success, and showing his troops that he had all confidence ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... lack of draperies testifies also to his horror of dust. There faces you besides a double door; when it is opened another door is seen. When that is opened you discover a writing table, and beyond can discern a book-case filled with heavy volumes—law reports perhaps. The little room beyond is, so to speak, an under-study. Between the two rooms a window, again barely curtained, throws light down the staircase. But in the big room, ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... so timid. If a soul could discern evil, it could, also, good; and this spirit was quick to see the last. Without a word,—but when were words necessary to souls?—with only a glance, she expressed so much love and pity for him, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... means of which he can convey messages far and wide among the tribes; he has a correct eye for form and expression, and draws a good picture; he can track a fugitive by delicate traces which the white man's eye cannot discern, and by methods which the finest white intelligence cannot master; he makes a missile which science itself cannot duplicate without the model—if with it; a missile whose secret baffled and defeated the searchings and theorizings of the white mathematicians for seventy ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... waiting for it to boil he went softly upstairs. There was no lamp burning in the bedroom and the place would have been in utter darkness but for the red glow of the fire, which did not dispel the prevailing obscurity sufficiently to enable him to discern the different objects in the room distinctly. The intense silence that reigned struck him with a sudden terror. He crossed swiftly over to the bed and a moment's examination sufficed to tell him that it was empty. He called her name, but there was no answer, and a hurried search only made it certain ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... open, when to our horror we saw a small knot of human figures approaching it. One loud piercing shriek reached us and at that instant we saw the figure of a man or woman—we were not close enough to discern which—flung by the others headlong into the open ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... trunk of a tree. I tied myself strongly to it with my turban, in hopes that the roc next morning would carry me with her out of this desert island. After having passed the night in this condition, the bird flew away as soon as it was daylight, and carried me so high, that I could not discern the earth; she afterward descended with so much rapidity that I lost my senses. But when I found myself on the ground, I speedily untied the knot, and had scarcely done so, when the roc, having taken up a serpent of a monstrous length in her ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... will sniff, and wink at it in ecstasy; he will sip it slowly with an air of knowing reverence; and his enjoyment of it probably will be far keener, than it would be, were the wine really all he fancies it, and he had lived years enough to have come to discern its qualities. Here the part played by belief and associations is of course evident. The boy's enjoyment is real, and it rests to a certain extent on a foundation of solid fact; the taste of the gooseberry champagne is an actual pleasure to his palate. Anything nauseous, black ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... they assigned to their facts their relative place and importance, and merged them in a pervading atmosphere of opinion, based upon the organic relation of cause and effect. Studying their works, we are enabled to discern the tendencies and developments of a race, and to note the effects of civilization, character, vice, virtue, and of that sum of them all which ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... vicariously atoned for, of gods undergoing a process of fossilisation, who, while they retain the privileges, have disburdened themselves of the pains and penalties of divinity. In the Jalno we may without undue straining discern a successor of those temporary kings, those mortal gods, who purchase a short lease of power and glory at the price of their lives. That he is the temporary substitute of the Grand Lama is certain; that he is, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... understand you, my lord," Sir Giles returned, gravely. "I discern nothing comic in the matter; though much of ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... oars Conyngham looked hard at his interlocutrice, but could discern nothing of her features. Her voice interested him, however, and he wondered whether there were ever calms on the coast of Spain at this time ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... could no more be reduced and modified by discussion than constitutional differences of hearing or of vision. And, as the quality of moral good either must or must not exist in every important operation of the will, we should discern its presence or absence separately in each; and even though we never had the conception of more than one insulated action, we should be able to pronounce upon its character. This, however, we have plainly no power to do. Every ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... conviction driven in on us by facts is quite another. The discipline of Antioch crystallised floating intentions into a clear statement, which henceforth became the rule of Paul's conduct. Well for us if we have open eyes to discern the meaning of difficulties, and promptitude and decision to fix and speak out plainly the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... of the hero of a story is as practical a lesson in life as any child can gain. In trying to discern the springs of action, in seeing how words and acts show character, and how dress and appearance indicate what a person really is, he is learning to understand his acquaintances and to judge whether they merit his trust and confidence, or are to be regarded with suspicion and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... be short, the treason, as I said, was concluded, the time appointed, the word given, the rebels rendezvoused, and the assault attempted. Now the King and his Son being all and always eye, could not but discern all passages in his dominions; and he, having always love for his Son as for himself, could not at what he saw but be greatly provoked and offended: wherefore what does he, but takes them in the very nick and first trip that they made towards their design, convicts them of the treason, horrid ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... of the lamp it was possible to discern more closely the features of the black-jack exponent. There was a subtle but noticeable resemblance to those of Mr. Bat Jarvis. Apparently the latter's oiled forelock, worn low over the forehead, was more a concession to the general ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... seizes it, with all his senses on the stretch. Marvellous is the assured grasp displayed by this French spirit, for no emotion affects the sharpness of the outline or the precision of the technique. We discern here manifold touches, lively, vibrant, crude, well fitted to reproduce the shocks and starts of the poor human machines as they pass from a weary torpor to the hyperaesthesia of hallucination—but these ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... I answers; them's killin's. An' as for inflooenccs, if you-all don't reckon the presence of a vig'lance committee in a camp don't cause a gent to pause an' ponder none before he pulls his gun, you dwells in ignorance. However, I'm yere to admit, I don't discern no sech sin-encrusted play in a killin' when the parties breaks even at the start, an' both gents is workin' to the same end unanimous. It does some folks a heap of good to ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... everywhere, and in many places ripped up by landslides. The sandbags, piled up and dislodged, appear in the starlike light of the rocket like the great dismantled stones of ancient ruined buildings. I look through the loophole, and discern in the misty and pallid atmosphere expanded by the meteor the rows of stakes and even the thin lines of barbed wire which cross and recross between the posts. To my seeing they are like strokes of a pen scratched upon the pale and perforated ground. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... of bold experiment. A new world of thought and imagination had dawned upon it; and a new literature, that of Italy, was spread before it. Yet who shall say that the facts answer to these expectations? In the writings of Chaucer himself a keen eye, it is true, may discern the faint beginnings of the critical spirit. No poet has written with more nicely calculated art; none has passed a cooler judgment upon the popular taste of his generation. We know that Chaucer despised ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Do you not discern in that letter Z an adverse influence? Does it not prefigure the wayward and fantastic progress of a storm-tossed life? What wind blew on that letter, which, whatever language we find it in, begins scarcely fifty words? Marcas' name was Zephirin; ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... teacher, Madame Carlotta Marchionni, a distinguished actress, and the interest of Gaetano Bazzi who also had great affection for me. It was really then that my artistic education began. It was then that I acquired the knowledge and the rules which placed me in a position to discern the characteristics of a true artist. I learned to distinguish and to delineate the comic and the dramatic passions. My temperament caused me to incline greatly toward the ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... aged fifteen, in a blue-and-white print frock and white apron so crisp that one could not discern a wrinkle in them, waited on the new guest. She did not ask him what he would have, nor present to him a card from which to select his meal. She brought him first a small cup of chicken broth, steaming hot; and though he regarded ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... air not to be denied, "I believe I can discern a point of honor as well as you. I fail to see ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... show you the interior of Watts McHurdie's shop, and as your eyes take in the dancing shapes, you discern the parliament in session. Colonel Martin F. Culpepper is sitting there with Watts McHurdie, reading and re-reading for the fourth and fifth time, in the peculiar pride that authorship has in listening to the reverberation of its own ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... from forth their fold, by one, Or pairs, or three at once; meanwhile the rest Stand fearfully, bending the eye and nose To ground, and what the foremost does, that do The others, gathering round her if she stops, Simple and quiet, nor the cause discern; So saw I moving to advance the first, Who of the fortunate crew were at the head, Of modest mien, and graceful in their gait. When they before me had beheld the light From my right side fall broken on the ground, So that the shadow reach'd the ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... so earnestly desire this match; and on the other side, the papists do so earnestly seek to impeach the same, as it maketh me the more earnest in furthering of the same. Besides, when I particularly consider her Majesty's state, both at home and abroad, so far forth as my poor eyesight can discern; and how she is beset with foreign peril, the execution whereof stayeth only upon the event of this match, I do not see how she can stand if this matter break off."[826] Lord Burleigh, in perplexity on account of Elizabeth's conduct, exclaimed that "he was ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... were several pretty, low coral islands, just opposite our encampment; and, immediately beyond these, out at sea, lay about a dozen other islands, at various distances, from half a mile to ten miles; all of them, as far as we could discern, smaller than ours and apparently uninhabited. They seemed to be low coral islands, raised but little above the sea, yet ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... scanty wisdom of man, on entering into an affair which looks well at first, cannot discern the poison that is hidden in it, as I have said above of hectic fevers. Therefore, if he who rules a principality cannot recognize evils until they are upon him, he is not truly wise; and this insight is given to few. And if the first disaster to the Roman Empire(*) should be examined, ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... brain. Their dreams are of gurgling brooks. They have visions of mill-ponds, with beautiful little cascades sluicing into them over dams. They stand, in imagination, on bridges, in the eddies beneath which they discern the wagging of silvery tails and rosy fins; and a very common form of nightmare with them is to fancy that the reel of the fishing-rod won't work, just as they are going to wind ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... softly upstairs. There was no lamp burning in the bedroom and the place would have been in utter darkness but for the red glow of the fire, which did not dispel the prevailing obscurity sufficiently to enable him to discern the different objects in the room distinctly. The intense silence that reigned struck him with a sudden terror. He crossed swiftly over to the bed and a moment's examination sufficed to tell him that it was empty. He called her name, but there was no answer, and a hurried ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... says, "This word among metallists is used to signify any metal that will not undergo the trial, that betrays itself to be adulterate or reprobate, and of a coarse alloy. . . . A reprobate mind, that is, a mind hardened in wickedness, and so stupid as not to discern between good and evil." We are quite familiar with the idea in everyday life. Ships, horses, land, governments, individuals, are being constantly subjected to trial, and, being found wanting, are rejected, reprobated. And what thus takes place in the lower plane of things, takes place ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... being hastily rammed on and I am compelled to wait while she sends upstairs for a fresh pair. You should see how her nostrils swell with pride as we sweep by my old pal, Nicholas Long, and his wife, who are manifestly not going to church. I can discern on Nick's face, as we pass, an expression which is half sardonic, half pitiful. Evidently he has not forgotten my quondam oft-repeated vow that no child of mine should be taught the orthodox fairy tales in unlearning which I had spent some of the ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... Texas appellate court's finding in the affirmative, after evaluation of the facts, should not be overturned inasmuch as the Supreme Court, in examining the transcript of the record, could not derive therefrom an adequate picture of the courtroom scene nor discern therein "such elements of misbehavior as expression, manner of speaking, bearing, and attitude of * * * [the attorney]." The fact that the bench was guilty of "mildly provocative language" was deemed insufficient to excuse the conduct of ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... season, they would break away into the forest and kill game. Moreover, still in imitation of their model, they held, as a necessary feature in the dreary drama of their existence, ponderous dalliances with unattractive mistresses, in whom they fondly tried to discern the charms of a Montespan or a La Valliere. This monotonous programme, sometimes varied by a violent contest whether they should occupy a seat with or without a back, or with or without arms, represented the even tenor ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... being so strongly—or, at least, so loudly—insisted on to-day. Man, that is to say, is not identical with God, any more than a son is identical with his father; but man is consubstantial, homogeneous, with God, lit by a Divine spark within him, a partaker of the Divine substance. As in nature we discern God revealed as Power, Mind, Will, Purpose, so in man's moral nature, and his inner satisfaction or dissatisfaction according as he does or does not approach a certain moral standard, we discern Him as Righteousness; and, more than all, since men, beings in whom "the Spirit of God dwelleth," are ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... all movements of the cosmical bodies to be the result of one and the same force; "of some higher and still unknown power," but luminiferous ether shaded his mental vision, and he failed to discern that power. In his investigations of those great subjects he is led to ask, "Are not the sun, and fixed ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... because my father receives you here, thanks to M. de Mancini, your friend—a friendship easily understood from the advantages you must derive from it—that I consent to endure your presence and the insult of your glance? Is it not enough that I should do this, and have you not wit enough to discern it, without adding to my shame by your insolent call ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... Buckle has well said in his "History of Civilization," that "No great political improvement, no great reform, either legislative or executive, has ever been originated in any country by its ruling class. The first suggestors of such steps have invariably been bold and able thinkers, who discern the abuse, denounce it, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... be,' Mr. Dunborough answered. And he took his first airing in a sedan next day. After that he grew so reticent about his affairs, and so truculent when the tutor tried to sound him, that Mr. Thomasson was at his wits' end to discern what was afoot. For some time, however, he got no clue. Then, going to Dunborough's rooms one day, he found them empty, and, bribing the servant, learned that his master had gone to Wallingford. And the man told him his suspicions. Mr. ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... Suddenly, from the northern end of the veranda, there came the sound of a latch or lock quickly turned, a light footfall on the creaking wooden floor, the swish and swirl of silken skirts, coming toward him rapidly. He gazed with all his eyes, but could not discern the advancing figure; so, struck by a sudden impulse, he sprang to the veranda, up the southern steps, and almost collided with a woman's form, scurrying past ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... thrown overboard also. We looked all over the ship to see if we could find any blood, and we thought we did perceive some in several places; but the heat of the sun, melting the pitch and tar upon the decks, made it impossible for us to discern it exactly, except in the round-house, where we plainly saw that there had been much blood. We found the scuttle open, by which we supposed that the captain and those that were with him had made their retreat into the great cabin, or those in the cabin had made their ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... The brackets contain etymological hints that may help the student to discern relationships otherwise overlooked. The genitive is given ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... had fallen asleep. At this very time, owing to the heat of the day, so great a vapor had been exhaled from the lake beneath that the whole of the northern side of the fortress cliff was covered with a mist so exceedingly thick we could not discern each other at a foot's distance. 'Now is the moment!' said our gallant leader; 'the enemy are stupefied with wine, the rock is clothed in a veil!-it is the shield of God that is held before us! under its shelter let us pass from ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... went one way; the one frustrated in his attempt to get the carbine rode another, Venters thought he made out a third rider, carrying a strange-appearing bundle and disappearing in the sage. But in the rapidity of action and vision he could not discern what it was. Two riders with three horses swung out to the right. Afraid of the long rifle—a burdensome weapon seldom carried by rustlers or riders—they had been put ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... she fifteen. As the result of the union eighteen children were born into the world, of whom Albrecht was the second. The lad, as he grew up, became a great favorite with his father, who appeared to discern in him the promise of future ability. The feeling of attachment was reciprocated in the most filial manner, and there are extant two well-authenticated portraits of the father from the facile brush of the son, one in the Uffizi ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... generation but to all the future, if I were to do anything which could make the minutest breach in this great conservatory of free principles. Those who perhaps have the same intentions but are separated by some little political animosities will I hope discern at last how little conducive it is to any rational purpose to lower its reputation. For my part, gentlemen, from much experience, from no little thinking, and from comparing a great variety of things, I am thoroughly ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... hooking down the branches, and claiming the right of all they can collect 'by hook or by crook.' But wo to the poor mothers who have to mend the garments in which the onslaught has been made!—wo to the little boy or girl whose mother has not the good sense to discern, in her child's rosy cheeks and bright eyes, a compensation for the rags in the frock or trousers, which is sure to be the consequence of a day spent in harrying the shrubs and briers! But many centuries must our youth have thus 'imbibed both sweet and smart' from yielding to these woodland attractions. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... paper money at a glance by their differing colours and sizes, but at present they are a distracting mystery to me. The notes are pieces of stiff paper with Chinese characters at the corners, near which, with exceptionally good eyes or a magnifying glass, one can discern an English word denoting the value. They are very neatly executed, and are ornamented with the chrysanthemum crest of the Mikado and the interlaced dragons ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... Martyrs. This was one of the early intimations which my wisdom enabled me to remark of the destination which nature had given you. You know, my lord, that the possessor of this lanthorn can turn it this way and that, as he pleases. He can contrive accurately to discern the countenance of every other person, without being visible himself. I need not enlarge to your lordship upon the admirable uses of this machine. I will only add, that my very dear and ever-lamented friend Mr. Pinchbeck, effected before he died an improvement upon ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... always, save for the peril in which the maid was, a gain and blessing. And so to our fortunes. You must know that from the further coast of our island—the further from our wreck, I mean—we could discern the outlines of other islands, the nearest of which appeared to be within but a few hours' sail. It was plain, therefore, that we were, very fortunately for us, cast away in the neighbourhood of a considerable archipelago, ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... this funereal sort of masquerade bothers extremely. He cannot find his wife among the guests. In fact, he does not recognize any of them until, to cap the climax, he meets his double, fights with him and dies, without being able to discern who is the ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... too common with the wives of the artist-tribe, and perhaps with most wives: not being exactly what he wished her to be, and lacking the faculties to become so, she tried to seem it. The desire was partly sincere, partly an affectation, as we discern in such little trifles as her suddenly using the word "thou" in a letter to Hookham where she had previously been using the ordinary colloquial "you." That she was not quite ingenuous we also detect in the fast-and-loose conduct which enabled her, while affecting to become what Shelley ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... meanest of Mr. Hastings's predecessors were does not appear to your Committee; nor are they able to discern the ground of propriety or decency for his assuming to himself a right to call any of them mean persons. But if such mean persons have possessed that degree of confidence from his immediate employers which for so many years he had not possessed "at any time," ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... settled exclusively by physical students. All we have to say on the matter is—That we always knew that God works by very simple, or seemingly simple, means; that the whole universe, as far as we could discern it, was one concatenation of the most simple means; that it was wonderful, yea, miraculous, in our eyes, that a child should resemble its parents, that the raindrops should make the grass grow, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... in whose presence he is soon to appear, and upon whose decision hangs some part of the world's destiny. Isabella first; for in that strange duet of government it is her womanly soprano that rings most clearly down the corridors of Time. We discern in her a very busy woman, living a difficult life with much tact and judgment, and exercising to some purpose that amiable taste for "doing good" that marks the virtuous lady of station in every age. This, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... cones of the encampment were softly touched by its light. The quarter-guard and foremost tents showed themselves prominently; but the body of the camp, the officers' tents, kitchens, canteen, and appurtenances in the rear were blotted out by the ground, because of its height above her. She could discern the forms of one or two sentries moving to and fro across the disc of the moon at intervals. She could hear the frequent shuffling and tossing of the horses tied to the pickets; and in the other direction the miles-long voice of the sea, whispering a louder note at ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... not going to spend it in company with a man she liked, and in despite of Dutch propriety, which would certainly have been thoroughly and outrageously shocked thereby? Denah knew nothing of the causes at work, but she was not slow to discern the result when she and her father and sister met the Van Heigen party that evening. She smoothed the bow at the neck of her best dress, and looked at her gloves discontentedly; she did not altogether admire ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... the long table, the fair hair floating on either side of it, the eyes fixed upon him with an expression that flashed him back to St. Croix and the last weeks of his mother's life. He fancied in that moment that he could even discern the earthen hue of the skin. When he realized that it was Angelica, he was hardly less startled, but he ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... spectacle. He was gazing at the Hungarian with a curious concentration, and the police captain, who had begun by thinking his colleague was saying far too much, and who was inclined to disagree with some of his conclusions, now thought he could discern method in his madness. ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... adorned by dormers and gables. In front of the house, on its southern side, lay the garden, with its paths and clipped hedges, and the little pond half overgrown by sedge and thick bushes. On the northern side, towards the sea, he could discern the carriage drive, and the extensive level yard with the ancient lime tree standing in the middle of it. Beyond that came four warehouses standing in a row, all painted yellow, with brown doors; and further on still, close down to the innermost curve ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... the history of France, not excepting the splendid period of Louis XIV.'s victories and the more brilliant era of the Empire. The Consular glory was then pure, and the opening prospect was full of flattering hope; whereas those who were but little accustomed to look closely into things could discern mighty disasters lurking under the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... was the exception to the rule, that hair generally gives a boy no great trouble from the time he merges out of babyhood until he puts on long pants and begins to discern something strangely and subtly attractive about the sex described by Mr. Kipling as being the more deadly of the species. During this interim it is a matter of no moment to a boy whether he goes shaggy or cropped, shorn or unshorn. At intervals a frugal parent trims him to see if both his ears ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... doctor observed that she bore in her arms some object which she held with great solicitation. An officer at the same time leaped from the boat and hastened towards the travellers. The doctor did not discern his face, but, from the glimmer of the moonlight upon his shoulders, saw that he wore double epaulettes. It may therefore be conjectured that this was Commodore O'Haleran himself. He made a brief but profound salute to the lady, and led her towards the galley. Then, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... us; and in former times they have been of the greatest. They do confine, and they do greatly narrow, the market for the Americans; but my perfect conviction of this does not help me in the least to discern how the revenue laws form any security whatsoever to the commercial regulations, or that these commercial regulations are the true ground of the quarrel, or that the giving way, in any one instance of authority, is to lose ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... abundance to attract their attention. Shortly after entering Rhio straits from the southward, the navigator is completely land-locked, and appears to be sailing in a large lake, amid the richest possible scenery; nor can he discern the slightest appearance of an outlet from this fairy scene, till he is within half a mile of the west end of the island of Luborn, when, all at once, the view opens at that part which leads him into the straits of Singapore. ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... self-government to the narrow range of synagogue interests appeared the surest remedy against anti-Semitism. Behind the abrogation of communal autonomy they saw the smiling vision of a Jewish school-reform, leading to the Polonization of Jewish education, while in the far-off distance they could discern the ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... wall in which my mind's eye can discern some traces of a rocky sea-coast, recalls to me a fearful story of travel derived from that unpromising narrator of such stories, a parliamentary blue-book. A convict is its chief figure, and this man escapes with other prisoners from a penal settlement. It is an island, and they seize a boat, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... told me, as he left me to retire, that I had much better go to bed, for all my work would amount to nothing but loss of necessary rest. I am ready to show him triumphant evidence to the contrary, in the clothes, as good as new, in which his children are habited. Before I can speak, I discern a lurking smile in his face. My boy Will stands in a sheepish posture, with his back as close to the jam, as if he were a polypus growing there, and his ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... mind now wide awake, and thoroughly on the alert, lay for some time in rapt enjoyment of this new experience. Then he opened his eyes, and found that he was in bed after all; the nightlight was burning on a table by the window, the bookcase stood where it did, and he could even discern Lubin, who seemed to have dropped asleep, in an armchair three or four yards away. That made the mystery all the greater, and Austin waited in expectant silence to see what would ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... Vanrenen cast a shadow on the unsullied intimacy of their affection. Therefore, he would be wary, circumspect, ready to accept as most credible theories which he would scout in any other conditions, quick to discern the truth, slow to point out wherein an inexperienced girl had erred, but merciless to the fortune-hunter who had so jeopardized Cynthia's happiness and ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... twenty wagons, groaning under their burden, went to and fro over the wretched road from Belle Plain to Fredericksburg. A credible witness says that for several days nearly all the bandages and a large proportion of the hospital supplies came from its treasury. No mind can discern and no tongue can declare what valuable lives it saved and what sufferings it alleviated. Who shall say that Christian charity has not its triumphs proud as were ever won on battle-field? If the Commission could boast only of its first twenty-four hours at Antietam ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... the alcove thrown up and to hear Mr. Cumberland's voice raised in loud command for him to quit the premises. But no such interruption came. The lonely watcher, whose solitary figure he could just discern above the unshaded sill, remained immovable, with his head buried in his arms, but whether in sleep or in brooding misery, ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... lines Rembrandt conveys perfectly the idea that a storm is approaching. The clouds seem to be in motion, scurrying across the sky in advance of the rain. One imaginative critic has thought that he could discern in the cloud-whirl a dim phantom figure as of the spirit of the on-coming storm. Like the clouds we often see in nature, it takes some new fantastic shape every time we look at it. Altogether the impression we receive is that of vivid reality. The artist's few lines have produced ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... quality leading him perpetually to interfere, after he had made himself master of that which concerned him not. He spent the livelong day in attempting to peer under the Countess's muffler, and apparently what he could there discern greatly ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... he approached the deserted earth-work and entered by the south path which descended over the debris of the former dens. In a few moments he could discern a female figure creeping in by the great north gap, or public gateway. They met in the middle of the arena. Neither spoke just at first—there was no necessity for speech—and the poor woman leant against Henchard, who ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... the left rose one of the fabulously high buildings for which the ancient city had been famous. It could not compare in magnitude with the tremendous structures that he could discern still farther ahead, but its dozen and a half of stories loomed up imposingly when contrasted with the moderate sized houses adjoining it. Constans looked up in wonder at its towering facade, then started back with an ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... words of an old writer, "God had given his sheep, not to be pastured, but to be shaven and shorn." This state of things had gone on for centuries, and the people like dumb, driven cattle had submitted. But those who could discern the signs of the times must have seen now that it could not go on much longer. The spread of education was rapidly increasing, several new colleges having been founded in Oxford during Wycliffe's lifetime. A strong spirit of independence, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... fill a place already occupied, the quicker apprehension of others will fasten upon it, drag it apart from its fellows, and find new work for it to do. Where a dull eye sees nothing but sameness, the trained faculty of observation will discern a hundred differences worthy of scrupulous expression. The old foresters had different names for a buck during each successive year of its life, distinguishing the fawn from the pricket, the pricket from the sore, and so forth, as its age increased. Thus it is also in that illimitable ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... all ripples. There was more beneath than the shifting shallows. Deep, still pools were there, and rocks on which might eventually be built a beacon-light for the souls of men. But, as yet, it took Helen's clear and faithful eyes to discern the pools; to perceive the ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... this specimen of grand and apparently noble manhood, who could neither read nor write, who knew next to nothing of the great world beyond his own Pampas, and who had not even seen a collection of huts sufficiently large to merit the name of village. He could, however, admirably discern the signs of the wilderness around him, as he showed by suddenly pointing to ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... a good deed. If thou mayest discern by that which is left of him what he is, fetch me to the ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... music ceased the lights sprang up again and Nan, looking across the room, met Mallory's gaze intently bent upon her. In his expression she could discern that by a queer gift of intuition he had comprehended the whole inner meaning of what she had been playing. Most people would have thought that it was a magnificent bit of composition, particularly for so young a musician, but Mallory went deeper and ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... cleared away. Soon after six, however, the thunder of the artillery began to roll from Liebertwolkwitz. It grew more violent, and approached nearer;—this was probably the moment when the Austrians stormed that place. The firing en pelotons was already heard. From our elevated position we could discern nothing, the dense fog concealing every object at the distance of one hundred paces. About ten, the artillery thundered along the whole line of battle. The atmosphere became clearer, and the clouds dispersed. ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... it as a signal," said I. "Let us see if there is any answer." I held it as he had done, and stared out into the darkness of the night. Vaguely I could discern the black bank of the trees and the lighter expanse of the moor, for the moon was behind the clouds. And then I gave a cry of exultation, for a tiny pin-point of yellow light had suddenly transfixed the dark veil, ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... monotone Of waters calling unto me; I know from whence the airs have blown, That whisper of the Eternal Sea; As low my fires of driftwood burn, I hear that sea's deep sounds increase, And, fair in sunset light, discern Its mirage-lifted ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... familiar, and to the people from whom he sprang. Yet, surely, the Lowlands of Scotland were more in his thoughts than the Zephyrean promontory, and the hard visage of John Knox peered from behind the mask of Zaleucus, when this passage left his pen. Nay, might not an acute German critic discern therein a reminiscence of that eminently Scottish institution, a "Holy Fair"? where as Hume's young ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... had led me every where up and down the nation, thereby giving me to see and know the temper and spirits of all men, and of the best of men—that the nation loathed their sitting. I knew it. And so far as I could discern, when they were dissolved, there was not so much as the barking of a dog, or any general or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... the woods of Koolau, without success. From Kahana they made a search through the mountains till they came to Kilohana, in Kalihi Valley, and from there to Waolani, in Nuuanu, where they slept in a cave. In the dead of night they heard the hum as of human voices, but were unable to discern any person, though the voices sounded close to them. At dawn silence reigned again, and when the sun arose, lo, and behold! there stood a large mound of stones, the setting of which resembled that of a heiau, or temple, the remains of which are ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... his seals, came in procession. Then all the Royal Dukes with their trains borne behind them, and last the King leaning on two Bishops. I do not, I dare say, give you the precise order. In fact, it was impossible to discern any order. The whole abbey was one blaze of gorgeous ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... bruised reed; Yea, here are such who wounded are, and bleed. As here are some who in their grammar be, So here are others in their A, B, C. Some apt to teach, and others hard to learn; Some see far off, others can scarce discern That which is set before them in the glass; Others forgetful are, and so let pass, Or slip out of their mind what they did hear But now; so great our differences appear Wherefore our Jacob's must have special care They ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... at night the fog began slightly to lift. As Kerry crossed the bridge over Limehouse Canal he could vaguely discern the dirty water below, and street lamps showed dimly, surrounded each by a halo of yellow mist. Fog signals were booming on the railway, and from the great docks in the neighborhood mechanical ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... into the way of life in which I spent my youth! If it were not for you, this present world would see no more of me forever. The sunshine would never fall on me, no more than on a ghost. Once in a while people might discern my figure gliding stealthily through the dim evening,—that would be all. I should be only a shadow of the night; it is you that give me reality, and make all things real for me. If, in the interval since I quitted this lonely old chamber, I had found no woman ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... at the creatures. Spread out to full dimensions, each one made a sphere about four feet in diameter. In the center, a solid mass whose outlines were difficult to discern; and spreading out from this a hundred long, thin, many-jointed arms or legs or branches or ...
— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson
... nothing removes him from his surroundings, he grows accustomed to them, and adapts himself to the vacuity which grows upon him and renders him powerless. Even now, Gaston's lungs were accustomed to the air; and he was willing to discern a kind of vegetable happiness in days that brought no mental exertion and no responsibilities. The constant stirring of the sap of life, the fertilizing influences of mind on mind, after which he had sought so eagerly in Paris, were beginning to fade from his memory, and he was in a fair ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... of her night and day, and that did Sigurd no less; but both held their peace, and no man could say from her bearing whether Gunnar found favour in her eyes; but that Sigurd misliked her, that was easy to discern. ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... men. Greater care will be taken of the poor and orphans and more energy will be spent in building up the moral life of the young men and women of the community. This will be done by these trained men who will come fully as well equipped to discern what these problems of society are as the physician who comes to heal our bodies and who must necessarily understand disease and remedy. Such a minister's thought will not be centered on making a great name for himself at the expense of an ignorant people. It will not matter to him ...
— The Demand and the Supply of Increased Efficiency in the Negro Ministry - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 13 • Jesse E. Moorland
... Harry, do you know there are moments when I feel that I am changing towards the sex; when I fancy I can discern the skeleton, as it ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... desires of many who likewise are eternal and intelligent' (Ka. Up. II, 5, 13). Since thus the plurality of the eternal individual Selfs rests on good authority, those who have an insight into the true nature of Selfs will discern without difficulty different characteristics distinguishing the individual Selfs, although all Selfs are alike in so far as having intelligence for their essential nature. Moreover the Sutra II, 3, 48 directly states the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... for persons who have never seen in their lives a cloud vanishing on a mountain-side, and whose conceptions of mist or vapor are limited to ambiguous outlines of spectral hackney-coaches and bodiless lamp-posts, discern through a brown combination of sulphur, soot, and gaslight, there is yet some hope; we cannot, indeed, tell them what the morning mist is like in mountain air, but far be it from us to tell them that they are incapable of feeling its beauty if they will seek it for ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... its toils; just as it will do well to shun the mere talker, and to seek out for itself candidates for election rather than have candidates thrust upon its attention by some caucus in London. But the main thing is that it should first discern men and women of ability and of character and then elect them for its representatives, rejecting those, it may be of more dazzling qualities, who are unstable in mind and consumed with vanity. It would be well if the elected representative ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... across the face of the sun in twelve or thirteen days, after which they remain invisible for about the same length of time until they reappear at the eastern limb. These early observers were quick to discern the true import of their discovery. They deduced from these simple observations the remarkable fact that the sun, like the earth, performs a rotation on its axis, and in the same direction. But there is the important difference between these rotations that whereas the earth ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... thus discern in the sentiments and faculties of youth the animating and impelling soul of historical events,—if, wherever in history we mark a great movement of humanity, we commonly detect a young man at its head or at its heart,—we must still, I admit, discriminate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... nobly sways Ingenuous youth; But, sought from cowards and the lying mouth, Praise is reproach. Eternal God alone For mortals fixeth that sublime award. He, from the faithful records of his throne, Bids the historian and the bard Dispose of honour and of scorn; Discern the patriot from the slave; And write the good, the wise, the brave, For ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... hemp, and therefore of old not us'd to kindle the sacrifice. The same injury trees likewise often suffer by rigorous and piercing colds and frosts; such as in the year 1683, rived many stately timber-trees from head to foot; which as the weather grew milder, clos'd again, so as hardly to be discern'd; but were found at the felling miserably shatter'd, and good for little: The best prevention is shelter, choice of place for the plantation, frequent shreading, whilst they are yet in their youth. Wind-shaken is also discover'd ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... mass, a mile to the east of Thunder Peak, and over its smooth face innumerable waterfalls trickled and shone. With this colour and motion, like a mighty Artist, the wind and light played, forming pictures that needed little fancy to discern. ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... conjecture, the eye takes in the Palatine and Capitol hills, catching, just beyond the last, the swelling dome of the Pantheon, which seems rather to rise out of, and crown, the Flavian Amphitheatre, than its own massy walls. Then, far in the horizon, we just discern the distant summits of the Appenines, broken by ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... interested him, and he puzzled his masters at his school. Coryndon was a curious mixture of imagination and strong common sense; few realize that it is only the imaginative mind that can see behind the curtain that divides life from life, and discern motives. ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... "Discern your amazing stubbornness?" he asked. "Why should you play at martyr, when your talent is commercial? You have no gifts for martyrdom but wooden tenacity. Pshaw! the leech has ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the Druidical groves whose solemn mysteries inspired even the arrogant Roman with awe. This picture, however, belongs to a later period—that of the Crusades, perhaps, for here is a procession in which appear figures in the long robe of the monk, and I think I can discern a cross on that banner borne at their head. But what, dear Aunt Nancy, could you possibly find in our land of yesterday, to associate with ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... are the Parisians! Yesterday evening so thick a fog came on, all at once, that it was almost impossible to discern the lamps in the streets, even when they were directly over-head. Had the fog occurred twenty-four hours earlier, the effect of the illuminations would have been entirely lost; and the blind would have had the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... was made by a Virginia creeper, which grew luxuriantly up to the eaves, hiding every sign of decay save those dim, dusty apertures which seemed to deny all possibility of life within. And yet, on looking steadily, did he not discern something at one of the windows on the top story—something like a curtain or a blind? And had not that same window the appearance of having been more recently cleaned than the others? He could not be sure; perhaps he only fancied these things. With ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... 'O Astika, my head swims and my heart breaks. I cannot discern the points of the earth, as I am afflicted ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... afraid, should we get closer, that we might make some noise and alarm the animals. I therefore made a sign to my companions to stop; and looking down, we could discern one of the dams I have spoken of carried across the stream from one side to the other, and apparently not quite finished. Though several beavers were running about it, they were not at work; indeed, all their operations ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... the land under all studding-sails we perceived a low white line extending from its eastern extreme point as far as the eye could discern to the eastward. It presented an extraordinary appearance, gradually increasing in height as we got nearer to it, and proving at length to be a perpendicular cliff of ice, between one hundred and fifty and two hundred feet above the level of the sea, perfectly ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... to his own, if it had not been for his Unitarian training and association with the churchmen emancipators. "Christianity is founded on, and supposes the authority of, reason, and cannot therefore oppose it, without subverting itself." ... "Its office is to discern universal truths, great and eternal principles ... the highest power of the soul." Thus preached Channing. Who knows but this pulpit aroused the younger Emerson to the possibilities of intuitive reasoning in spiritual ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... fulfilled; that half-century has passed by, and the great republic goes on its career of greatness, and no eye can discern the ultimate ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... case under arm, was striding rapidly southward. They exchanged a cordial greeting. Benito looked after the tall courtly figure crossing Montgomery street diagonally toward a big express wagon. Benito thought he could discern a quick nervous movement back of it. A man stepped out, directly ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... she hurried through the quiet graveyard, down the hill, and along the path which led to the dwellings of the settlement. Jonathan stood looking after her, as long as his eye could discern the ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... "Where away?" "On the lee beam." I strained my eyes in the direction indicated, but could make out nothing like land. I could see absolutely nothing but water all round. Two hours passed before I could discern anything which could give one the idea of land—three small, misty, cloud-looking objects, lying far off to the south, which were said to be the islands. In about an hour more we were within about five miles of Les Apotres, part of the group, having passed Cochon in the distance. Cochon is so called ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... not be coeval with the rest of the building[21]: on this it would be impossible to decide positively, so shattered, impaired, and defaced are the walls, and so evidently is their coating the work of different periods. I fancied that in some parts I could discern a mode of construction, in layers of brick and stone, similar to that of Roman buildings in our own country, while many of the bricks, from their texture and shape, appear also to be Roman. Tradition, if we follow ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... herd: every Kraal has half-a-dozen of these oxen at the least. When one of them dies, or grows so old, that, being unfit for business, his owner kills him, a young one is chosen out of the herd to succeed him, by an ancient Hottentot, who is judged best able to discern his capacity for instruction. This young ox is associated with an old Backeleyer, and taught, by blows and other means, to follow him. At night they tie them together by the horns; and for some part of the day they fasten them together in ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... the habit of virtue, moral as well as intellectual, cannot possibly be had all on a sudden, but it must be acquired through long custom, and as these people place their custom in some art, and care not to discern other things, it is impossible to them to have discretion. Wherefore it happens that often they cry aloud: "Long live Death!" and "Let Life die!" because some one begins the cry. And this is the most dangerous defect in their blindness. For this reason Boethius judges glory of the people vain, ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... holier a man is, the more he is conscious of his sinfulness. To the end of life this must be so; for there is no reaching perfection here. Those, chiefly, who have made most progress in the struggle against sin here, know how hateful it is. The higher men rise here in the divine life, the more they discern their imperfections, because they can better measure them by the measure of GOD'S perfections. Each loftier level is but a new standpoint from which to lift the eyes, and view the peaks which soar upward towards infinite elevations. ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... says Buddhism, why men are unhappy is that they are alive. Life and sorrow are inseparable—nay, they are one and the same thing. The mere fact of being alive is a misery. When you have clear eyes and discern the truth, you shall see this without a doubt, says the Buddhist. For consider, What man has ever sat down and said: 'Now am I in perfect happiness; just as I now am would I like to remain for ever and for ever without change'? ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... noise. The youngest jumped up into my hat, and shouted so there that it tickled me. The little thoughts may grow—I know that very well; and out in the world thoughts come too, and not only of my kind, for as far as I can see, I cannot discern anything like myself; but the wingless houses, whose throats make no noise, have thoughts too, and these come to my thoughts, and make love to them, as it is called. It's wonderful enough—yes, there are many wonderful things. Something has come over me, or into me,—something has changed ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... about at my companions' faces I could not discern even in the depths of their eyes a single ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... had seen the child, and a pang of bitter self-upbraiding pierced her heart. She kissed the still lips for her mother's sake, and laid her gently down. Had Susy and Granny entertained an angel unawares, while her blind eyes had not been able to discern "the ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... Man, who will discern in this work of mine the wonderful works of Nature, if you think it would be a criminal thing to destroy it, reflect how much more criminal it is to take the life of a man; and if this, his external form, appears to thee ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... uppermost in my mind; and, as the queer-looking old gentleman continued to hobble downwards I began to wonder whether the scullions in the kitchen, whom I could dimly discern beneath the street level and behind a screen of iron railings, would not, likewise, turn up their noses at the sight of such a seedy individual, telling him they had no rags or bones or bottles for ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... so closely aggregated in some of its tracts as to suggest the appearance of a mosaic of stars. He resolved numerous nebulae into clusters of stars, and penetrated with his great telescope depth after depth of space crowded with 'island universes of stars,' beyond which he was able to discern luminous haze and filmy streaks of light, the evidence of the existence of other universes plunged in depths still more profound, where space verges on infinity. In his exploration of the starry heavens Herschel's labours were truly amazing. On four different occasions he completed ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... heated sand, pitch, and other disagreeable things could be poured on the heads of the foe. In the courtyard on the south stands the great hall with its oriel, buttery, and kitchen, and amidst the ruins you can discern the chapel, sacristy, ladies' bower, presence chamber. The castle stayed not long in the family of the builder, his son John probably perishing in the wars, and passed to Sir Thomas Lewknor, who opposed Richard III, and was therefore attainted of high ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... the evening for Bles Alwyn. Even his inexperienced eye could discern that Miss Wynn was very popular, and that most of the men ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... it down]. Wert thou a thief, 'Twould show the thief and shame him. [Runs to his mate and makes her look through.] Look through the sieve! Discern'st thou the thief, And darest ...
— Faust • Goethe
... queries respecting a divine revelation. Although I am unable to trace the connexion of many of your remarks with which you call your main subject, yet I am not disposed to doubt that you comprehend such connexion—I think I understand your statements so as to be able to discern the following particulars, ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... fields, To see what Nature yields With fullest hands to men already free, It well may be, As on some indecipherable book The Guest will look, With eyes too old,—too old, too dim to see; Too old, too old to learn; Or to discern— Before it slips away, The joy of such a late half-holiday! Proffer those starved eyes your belated cup: They look not up. Too late, too late for any sky to do Brief kindness with its blue. And what behold they, ...
— The Singing Man • Josephine Preston Peabody
... and (unless further explain'd) useless words of Matter and Form. From whence there may arise many admirable advantages, towards the increase of the Operative, and the Mechanick Knowledge, to which this Age seems so much inclined, because we may perhaps be inabled to discern all the secret workings of Nature, almost in the same manner as we do those that are the productions of Art, and are manag'd by Wheels, and Engines, and Springs, that ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... to the North-West, so that your course must be directed accordingly. In coasting along the shore, you will discern the summits which are marked on the chart. The high conical hill, on the south side of the entrance of Endeavour River, is Mount Cook, bearings of which, crossed with the summit of Cape Bedford, or any of the particularized summits ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... Legation a guard of soldiers. The British Legation is guarded by infantry soldiers—an untidy, ragged, undisciplined lot, with cylindrical hats worn at all angles on the side of the head, and with uniforms so dirty and torn that it is difficult to discern what they should be like. Nearly all other Legations are provided with soldiers of the (Persian) Cossack regiment, who are infinitely better drilled and clothed than the infantry regiments. They are quite military in appearance. It was believed that these ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... sir, see danger ahead—danger of a delicate discussion of the difference our short acquaintance would have made to me if I had heard this morning that you were shot overnight. Pray understand that I discern in this nothing but restless male vanity, always on the alert to save its owner—or slave—from capture or entanglement by dangerous single women with no property. You would have been perfectly safe in my hands, even if your recommendations ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... approval, Mary, but the Queen must do as she lists. She is of an age to discern what is best ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... for one single day Can I discern my way, But this I surely know,— Who gives the day, Will show the way, So ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... I fear I am unjust to the Railway Company, for there was light enough for me to see, and in some measure scrutinize, the face of my fellow-passenger. I could discern a strong chin, and good, useful jaws; with a firm-lipped mouth, and a nose more remarkable for quantity than disposition of mass, being rather low, and very thick. It was surmounted by two brilliant, kindly, black ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... times and spread out thin, and the cement was carefully spread over them in a uniform layer. The mass was then turned three or four times until the eye could detect no difference in color; that is, each grain large enough for the eye to discern seemed to be coated with cement. After this dry mixing, water was added in a fine spray—not a deluge from a pail—but only enough to moisten the mixture. The mass was then turned three or four times. The mixture was then ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... he conveys Eovaai to the Hypotofan court, where he corrupts her mind and is about to triumph in her charms when he is summoned to quell a political disturbance. The princess, left languishing in a bower, is saved by her good Genius, who enables her to discern the true deformity of her betrayer and to escape to the castle of the good Alhahuza, and ultimately into the kingdom of Oozoff, where Ochihatou's magic has no power over her. During her stay there she listens to much political theorizing of a republican trend. Ochihatou succeeds ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... account, was to inflict the severer reproof. Ah! how vainly do we strive to conceal the secret thoughts of the mind from the knowledge of God! His eyes, which run to and fro through the earth, penetrate through every disguise, and perfectly discern every inward motion as well as every outward action. We live every moment—in the darkest midnight as well as at the brightest noon—in the full blaze of Omniscience. "O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me: thou knowest ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... emotion). God of revenge! inspire me to invent Some new, unheard-of torture! Is their crime So clear, so plain, so public to the world, That without e'en the trouble of inquiry The veriest hint suffices to reveal it? This is too much! I did not dream of this! I am the last of all, then, to discern it— The last in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Nevertheless she could by now understand at least what Hen supposed she was talking about. It was as if the cataclysm in the May-time had chipped a peep-hole in the embracing sphere of her girlhood's round, and through this hole she began to discern novel proceedings afoot.... ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... day. He filled many great places in the public service with so much modesty and with a gracious charm of manner and behavior which so attracted and engrossed our admiration that we failed at first to discern the full strength of the man. It is not until after his death, when we sum up what he has done for purposes of biography or of eulogy, that we see how important and varied has been ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... my reply. "I can discern no reason for your forsaking a tranquil home to brave so ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... worlds of life, of action, of beauty, of contemplation, of knowledge. Then, after a few more exercises in Homer, the grammar being judiciously worked in along with the literature of the epic, a teacher might discern whether it was worth while for his pupils to continue in the study of Greek. Homer would be their guide ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... had lived expectant and crying, like the souls under the altar, 'How long, O Lord, how long?' Now these two are brought from their hopeful repose, perchance to learn how near their deliverance was; and behind them we seem to discern a dim crowd of holy men and women, who had died in faith, not having received the promises, and who throng the portals of the unseen world, waiting for the near advent of the better Samson to bear away the gates to the city on the hill, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... perhaps five or ten! 'They are coming,' is whispered in the observation post. A thunder of Italian artillery greets the attacking forces. On they come. Instinctively one can discern a shadowy mass moving forward. Huddled together, they crouch low. Shells are falling and then cease, and the 'click,' 'click,' of the machine gun's enfilading fire is heard. The enemy reaches the Italian advance trenches. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com
|
|
|
