Discerning Quotes - Page 4

• Equations seem like treasures, spotted in the rough by some discerning individual, plucked and examined, placed in the grand storehouse of knowledge, passed on from generation to generation. This is so convenient a way to present scientific discovery, and so useful for textbooks, that it can be called the treasure-hunt picture of knowledge.

  Robert P. Crease

  Knowledge, Science, Discovery

  Robert P. Crease (2010). “The Great Equations: Breakthroughs in Science from Pythagoras to Heisenberg”, p.17, W. W. Norton & Company

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• If I were to offer any advice to young writers, it would be this: be discriminating and be discerning about the work you set for yourself. That done, be the untutored traveler, the eager reader, the enthusiastic listener. Put what you learn together carefully, and then write thoughtfully, with respect both for the reader and your sources.

  Barry Lopez

  Writing, Advice, Together

  FaceBook post by Barry Lopez from Aug 04, 2011

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• I loved working with kids, and kids are the most incredibly discerning audience. And if they don't believe you, they will tell you and let you know. I mean, kids is where it's at, really.

  Sally Hawkins

  Believe, Mean, Kids

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• I see that you believe in love such as the poets and romancers have represented... The poets represent love as the sculptors design beauty, as the musicians create melody; that is to say, endowed with an exquisite nervous organization, they gather up with discerning ardor the purest elements of life, the most beautiful lines of matter, and the most harmonious voices of nature.... To try to find in real life such love as this, eternal and absolute, is the same thing as to seek on the public squares such a woman as Venus or to expect nightingales to sing the symphonies of Beethoven.

  Alfred de Musset

  Love, Beautiful, Real

  Alfred de Musset (2012). “The Confession of a Child of the Century”, p.46, tredition

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• It often seems as though the silent, humble servant is secretly wiser and more discerning than the haughty master; yet through dutiful (and sometimes insecure) surrender he continues to serve and carry out petty orders in loyal acquiesce.

  Criss Jami

  Humble, Insecure, Order

  Criss Jami (2016). “Healology”, p.41, Criss Jami

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• If we want parents to be discerning about what children are watching then we need to put stuff in there for them to watch, too.

  Steve Burns

  Children, Parent, Watches

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• Courts are the mere instruments of the law, and can will nothing. When they are said to exercise a discretion, it is a mere legal discretion, a discretion to be exercised in discerning the course prescribed by law; and, when that is discerned, it is the duty of the Court to follow it. Judicial power is never exericised for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Judge; always for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Legislature; or, in other words, to the will of the law.

  John Marshall

  Exercise, Law, Judging

  Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 22 U.S. (9 Wheaton) 738, 866, 1824.

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• Tinted Distances is the achievement of a wise and discerning poet.

  Claudia Emerson

  Wise, Distance, Achievement

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• But the golden-rod is one of the fairy, magical flowers; it grows not up to seek human love amid the light of day, but to mark to the discerning what wealth lies hid in the secret caves of earth.

  Margaret Fuller

  Lying, Flower, Light

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• Quotation... A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he can give it himself, or because they are beautiful or witty, or because he expects them to touch a cord of association in his reader, or because he wishes to show that he is learned and well read. Quotations due to the last motive are invariably ill-advised; the discerning reader detects it and is contemptuous; the undiscerning is perhaps impressed, but even then is at the same time repelled, pretentious quotations being the surest road to tedium.

  Henry Watson Fowler

  Beautiful, Witty, Giving

  A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926)

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• Men have got more of a discerning eye. They appreciate cut and details, things that aren't so obvious. They like things that have cachet and gentlemanliness.

  John Galliano

  Eye, Cutting, Men

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• It is easier to find guides, someone to tell you what to do, than someone to be with you in a discerning, prayerful companionship as you work it out yourself. This is what spiritual direction is.

  Eugene H. Peterson

  Spiritual, Companionship, Easier

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• To each, therefore, must be given his own share of goods, and the distribution of created goods, which, as every discerning person knows, is laboring today under the gravest evils due to the huge disparity between the few exceedingly rich and the unnumbered propertyless, must be effectively called back to and brought into conformity with the norms of the common good, that is, social justice.

  Pope Pius XI

  Wisdom, Justice, Evil

  Catholic Church. Pope (1922-1939 : Pius XI), Pope Pius XI (1947). “On reconstructing the social order: (Quadragesimo anno)”

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• [I]n my country, when they would say a man has no sense, they say, such an one has no memory; and when I complain of the defect of mine, they do not believe me, and reprove me, as though I accused myself for a fool: not discerning the difference betwixt memory and understanding, which is to make matters still worse for me. But they do me wrong; for experience, rather, daily shows us, on the contrary, that a strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Country, Strong, Memories

  Michel de Montaigne (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)”, p.239, Delphi Classics

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• You have to be more discerning, Lily, when experimenting with bondage." He wiggled his eyebrows. "I'd make a great master.

  Christine Feehan

  Eyebrows, Lilies, Bondage

  Christine Feehan (2003). “Shadow Game”, p.329, Penguin

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• If you feel a great loneliness and a deep longing for human contact, you have to be extremely discerning...and ask yourself whether this situation is truly God given. Because where God wants you to be, God holds you safe and gives you peace, even when there is pain. To live a disciplined life is to live in such a way that you want only to be where God is with you. The more deeply you live your spiritual life, the easier it will be to discern the difference between living with God and living without God, and the easier it will be to move away from the places where God is no longer with you.

  Henri Nouwen

  Spiritual, Pain, Loneliness

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• But they know about us, they know, the four corners, and the chairs nearby us. Discerning shadows also know, and even the table keeps quiet.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Shadow, Four, Tables

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• Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do, In spider’s web a truth discerning, Attach one silken strand to you For my returning.

  E. B. White

  Spiders, Gone, Strands

  E. B. White (1989). “The Letters of E. B. White”, Perennial

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• Most timidities have such secret compensations and Miss Bart was discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in proportion to the outer self depreciation.

  Edith Wharton

  Vanity, Self, Missing

  Edith Wharton (2012). “The House of Mirth”, p.16, Courier Corporation

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• Take no duty of the Guard lightly. Friends must not be enemies Just as enemies must not be friends. Discerning the two is a life's work.

  David Petersen

  Two, Enemy, Duty

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• Then he knew that they had rounded the cape of good hope, and he took her large, soft hand again and covered it with forlorn little kisses, first the hard metacarpus, the long, discerning fingers, the diaphanous nails, and then the hieroglyphics of her destiny on her perspiring palm.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Kissing, Destiny, Hands

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• One curiosity of being a foreigner everywhere is that one finds oneself discerning Edens where the locals see only Purgatory.

  Pico Iyer

  Eden, Curiosity, Purgatory

  Pico Iyer (2011). “The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home”, p.185, Vintage

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• Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to discerning that fine hair’s-breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise the question: Why bother?

  Molly Ivins

  Hair, Texas, Differences

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• Discerning placement of a comma does not atone for a spiritual coma.

  Paramahansa Yogananda

  Spiritual, Doe, Placement

  Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda (2008). “Autobiography of a Yogi”, p.128, Diamond Pocket Books (P) Ltd.

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• Basically the children who watch it just see the little characters they love, and so they're not discerning about whether it looks great or it's a great story or anything.

  Don Bluth

  Children, Character, Stories

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