|
|
|
More "Discern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... idolizing them, I am sure they are still, in many ways, of great use to 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 all that may ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... judgments received. He even knew at times a stirring of the senses, which is the farthest that many of his kind ever progress in the direction of love. Of the nobler features in Emma's character, he of course remained ignorant; they did not enter into his demands upon woman, and he was unable to discern them even when they were brought prominently before him. She would keep his house admirably, would never contradict him, would mother his children to perfection, and even would, go so far as to take an intelligent ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... thirty miles, is a jumble of mountains tossed together in the wildest confusion, and exhibiting no definite outline. At the east, far inland, lay the long ridge of which Mangerton is the loftiest point. At the north alone could we discern an extensive view, where a rich and well cultivated valley extended along Dingle Bay as far as Ballyheige. But the grandeur of the scene Jay at our feet. Beneath us yawned at every side chasms of seemingly unfathomable depth, whose darkness it was impossible to penetrate, as the sun was sinking ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... lightness of a shadow. The boat came opposite him, passed on, and touched the landing-steps at the further end. One of its occupants was a man, as Stephen had known by the easy stroke of the oars. When the pair ascended the steps, and came into greater prominence, he was enabled to discern that the second personage was a woman; also that she wore a white decoration—apparently a feather—in her hat or bonnet, which spot of white was the only distinctly visible portion ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... conical buoy at the entrance of Hamley river bent its head shorewards as the strong tide swept past it. From the low point beneath Calshott Castle a flying machine rose suddenly, circled round in a wide sweep and then sped swiftly eastwards towards Spit-head. In the roads off Cowes we could discern many yachts at anchor. One of the Hamburg-American lines crept cautiously up the Solent. A belated cruiser, four-funneled, black and grim, on her way to join the Fleet, followed the huge German steamer. The ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... even A sin turn in the wards of Heaven, (As ethics of the text-book go), So little men their own deeds know, Or through the intricate melee Guess whitherward draws the battle-sway; So little, if they know the deed, Discern what therefrom shall succeed. To wisest moralists 'tis but given To work rough border-law of Heaven, Within this narrow life of ours, These marches 'twixt delimitless Powers. Is it, if Heaven the future showed, Is it the all-severest mode To see ourselves with the eyes of ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... a step and lifted her face to his, trying to look into his eyes more deeply than she had ever looked; but before she could discern what they expressed he had taken hold of her hands and bent his head to ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... the city any more; and that if they kept within it themselves they should not be any more conquered, for God had blinded their minds for the transgressions they had been guilty of, nor could they see how much greater forces the Romans had than those that were now expelled, no more than they could discern how a famine was creeping upon them, for hitherto they had fed themselves out of the public miseries and drank the blood of the city. But now poverty had for a long time seized upon the better part, and a great many had died already ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Shepherd hears, A cry as of a Dog or Fox; He halts, and searches with his eyes Among the scatter'd rocks: And now at distance can discern A stirring in a brake of fern; From which immediately leaps out A ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... to the uttermost in the cause and the war which were still pending. At the end of that desperate road, along which he had dared stubbornly and against so much advice to lead the nation, he seemed now to discern the goal. That he should be permitted to guide to the end in that journey, and that his judgment and leadership should receive the crown of success and approval, was a reward, almost a right, which he must intensely desire and which he could not lose ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... and at the period when sleep is the strongest, that my attention became riveted upon the singular movements of some animal which appeared to be feeding upon the withered grass which covered the plain. Sometimes it moved near enough to allow me to almost discern what it was, and then it would recede and be lost from sight for a few minutes, to again appear and ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... bosoms echo back the shouts of the many and strong That things are all as they best may be, save a few to be right ere long, And my eyes have not the vision in them to discern what to these is so clear, The blot seems straightway in me alone; one better he ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... helping her mother with the tea things, but her round eyes were first to discern the pair who came in ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... to tossue, and embroider; but whether it be as manual operation of substantial refined stuffs, with apt and solid instruments, or only curious cobwebs, unpalpable rainbows, and a phantastic imitation of the actions of more terrestrial mortals, since it transcended all the senses of the seer to discern whether, I leave to conjecture ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... lived by each of us? People in ancient times thought so. Inborn dispositions, so different in children, caused them to believe in impressions left by previous existences in the imperishable germ of man. From the time when intelligence begins to show itself in children we faintly discern a general attitude towards things, which is very like a memory thereof. It would appear that, according to this system, no one is unconnected with the elements he introduces into life at ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... arms we discern the fading gleam of the spirit of mediaeval chivalry, soon to vanish before the new art of war. Rough and violent as were these displays as compared with the pastimes of later days, the magnificence with which they were conducted, ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... on an 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 right conclusion. When there is doubt (sa@ms'aya) about the specific nature of anything we have ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... subjoining, from the same interesting authority, that long after the time even of the publication just referred to, the town of Caen was surrounded by lofty and thick stone walls—upon the tops of which three men could walk a-breast: and from thence the inhabitants could discern, across those large and beautiful gardens, "the vessels sailing in the river Orne, and unloading their cargoes by the sides of walls." It appears indeed to have been a sort of lounge, or fashionable promenade—by means of various ladders for the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and greater part was overcast by one huge cloud stretching from the mountaintops. The black cloud, blending in the absence of any wind with the mountains, moved slowly onwards, its curved edges sharply denned against the deep starry sky. Only in front of him could the Cossack discern the Terek and the distance beyond. Behind and on both sides he was surrounded by a wall of reeds. Occasionally the reeds would sway and rustle against one another apparently without cause. Seen from down below, against the clear part of the sky, their waving tufts looked like ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... conjugal roof; they are mouse-traps, in which the unwary are always caught. But she begged and prayed, and even cried, and at last said: "You shall see how I will love you there." Her wish seemed so strange that I could not explain it to myself; but on thinking it over, I thought I could discern a profound hatred for her husband, the secret vengeance of a woman who takes a pleasure in deceiving him, and who, moreover, wishes to deceive him ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... passed 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 ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... John and Peter and Charles, and they tilled the soil of France; but on their bowed shoulders rests the universal burden; these dumb figures are eloquent of the uncomplaining, hopeless "peasanthood" of the world. In the actual to discern the ideal, in the appearance to penetrate to the reality, without taking leave of the material to reveal the spiritual,—this is the mystery and vocation of the artist, and his achievement ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... divided impulses which threatened her with repentance of her own acts. Whether Grandcourt had been offended or not there was no judging: his manners were unchanged, but Gwendolen's acuteness had not gone deeper than to discern that his manners were no clue for her, and because these were unchanged she was not the less ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... and for better care. But very soon after reaching Onega hemmorhage began again. Then followed weeks of struggle for life. Everything possible was done for him with the means at hand. Although the hospital afforded no X-ray to discern the location of the fatal arterial lesion through which his life was secretly spurting away, the post mortem revealed the fact that the Bolshevik rifle bullet had severed a tiny ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... through rents in the twirling, heat-laden atmosphere the dim shapes of bridges mirrored by the water beneath him; and once the two islands apparently swept toward him, a blur of green; while at the end of the valley, framed by hills, he seemed to discern the odd-looking Transbordeur ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... 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 ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... interposed the Cardinal quietly "Nothing indeed can prevent thee,—no one can hinder thee from walking the world according to thine own will and direction. Thou must take good and evil as they come, and strive thy best to discern between them— and if the love of God cannot help thee—well!—perchance the love ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... They had never tried. Oh, Miss Lavington! cannot you see that in those barbarous and profligate ages of the later empire, it was impossible for men to discern the spiritual beauty of marriage, degraded as it had been by heathen brutality? Do you not see that there must have been a continual tendency in the minds of a celibate clergy to look with contempt, almost with spite, on pleasures ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... in the church about the decrepitude of the monastery; thoughts which had sprung from his own personal judgment, pleasing to his self-esteem, and therefore tainted by that arrogance of the spirit which his beloved mystics had taught him to discern and abhor. Clasping his hands, he fixed his gaze on the wild ridge of the hill, picturing to himself Benedetto praying there, and, in an act of silent renunciation, he humbly relinquished his own desires concerning the young man's future. He praised God ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... you discover any sail at sea, either to windward or to leeward of the admiral, or if any two or three of our fleet shall discover any such like sail which the admiral cannot discern, if she be a great ship and but one, you shall strike your main topsail and hoist it again so often as you judge the ship to be hundred tons of burthen; or if you judge her to be 200 tons to strike and hoist twice; if 300 tons thrice, and answerable to ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... Moon, was at times inspired with the love of mortals. Her greatest favorite was Tithonus, son of Laomedon, king of Troy. She stole him away, and prevailed on Jupiter to grant him immortality; but forgetting to have youth joined in the gift, after some time she began to discern, to her great mortification, that he was growing old. When his hair was quite white she left his society; but he still had the range of her palace, lived on ambrosial food, and was clad in celestial raiment. At length he lost the power of using his ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... with her head resting against—was it a tweed arm or the bank? She moved a little, and found that first impressions are apt to prove misleading. It was the bank. She opened her eyes to see a brown, red-lined hat on the ground beside her, half full of water, through which she could dimly discern the golden submerged name of the maker. She seemed to have been contemplating it with vague interest for about an hour, when she became aware that some one was dabbing her forehead ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... yet to form their works with skill requires an exertion of judgment, and frequently of taste, of which their contemners appear to have no due conception. Such literary labours it is thought the learned will not be found to want; and the unlearned cannot discern the value. But to such Abridgers as Monsieur Le Grand, in his "Tales of the Minstrels," and Mr. Ellis, in his "English Metrical Romances," we owe much; and such writers must bring to their task a congeniality ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Hackney Marshes. It is ... nasty. At every ten paces there is the black mouth of an alley with just space enough for the passage of one person. Within the jaws of each alley is a lounging figure—man, woman, or child, Londoner or foreigner, you cannot discern. But it is there, silent, watchful, expectant. And if you choose to venture, you may examine more closely. You may note that the faces that peer at you are faces such as one only sees elsewhere in the picture of Felicien Rops. Sometimes it is a curl-sweet ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... the patriotic cause. After 1848 the building of the Italian nation becomes, indeed, essentially the story of Piedmontese organization, leadership, conquest, and expansion. Victor Emmanuel, honest and liberal-minded, was not a statesman of the first rank, but he had the wisdom to discern and to rely upon the statesmanship of one of the most remarkable of ministers in the history of modern Europe, Count Cavour. When, in 1850, Cavour entered the Piedmontese ministry he was known already as an ardent advocate of both constitutionalism and national unification, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... eyes lightened unpleasantly as he made this remark, and Marius Longford, quick to discern every shade of tone in a voice, recognised a touch of satire in the seemingly casual words. He made no observation, however, but kept his lynx eyes and ears open, watching and listening for anything that might perchance be of use in furthering his ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... forsook the coast of England. So again on Tuesday, the 30 of July, seven weeks after, we got sight of land, being immediately embayed in the Grand Bay, or some other great bay; the certainty whereof we could not judge, so great haze and fog did hang upon the coast, as neither we might discern the land well, nor take the sun's height. But by our best computation we were then in the 51 degrees of latitude. Forsaking this bay and uncomfortable coast (nothing appearing unto us but hideous rocks and mountains, bare of trees, and void of any green herb) ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... "'Your common sense may discern what is needed,' said Bill. 'I wish you'd come at least once a week to dinner. My wife would be delighted, to have you, Soc. You are one of the few men who ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... Don Philippe Belvidero placed his father's corpse on the table. After kissing the stern forehead and the gray hair he put out the lamp. The soft rays of the moonlight which cast fantastic reflections over the scenery allowed the pious Philippe to discern his father's body dimly, as something white in the midst of the darkness. The young man moistened a cloth in the liquid and then, deep in prayer, he faithfully anointed the revered head. The silence was intense. Then he heard indescribable rustlings, but he attributed them to the wind ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... resolved never to republish the book as a whole; some parts of it being, by the established fame of Turner, rendered unnecessary; and others having been always useless, in their praise of excellence which the public will never give the labour necessary to discern. But, finding lately that one of my dearest friends, who, in advanced age, retains the cheerfulness and easily delighted temper of bright youth, had written out, for her own pleasure, a large number of passages from 'Modern Painters,' it seemed to me certain that what ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... introduction to another piece was written, and was read, at the same meeting, by a member of my own class. I fear that there is a sly hit intended by the writer, which I do not discern, at somebody, or something, related to freedom. This I suspected from the applause it excited on the part of those who I know are the most deadly foes we have to free institutions. I obtained a copy of this introduction. It will serve, at least, to show ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... at various points during the Workshop. At the session devoted to national and international computer networks, LYNCH, Howard BESSER, Ronald LARSEN, and Edwin BROWNRIGG highlighted the virtues of Internet today and of the network that will evolve from Internet. Listeners could discern in these narratives a vision of an information democracy in which millions of citizens freely find and use what they need. LYNCH noted that a lack of standards inhibits disseminating multimedia on the network, a topic also discussed by BESSER. LARSEN addressed the issues of network scalability ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... conception, it will easily be perceived how anxious I must be to truly discern and express the relation between such objects as works of art by common consent so highly honoured, and at the same time so active in their effect upon the most exquisitely endowed of mankind. Especially since to-day caprice, humour and temperament are, by the majority of ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... to trace, if we could, what share the several domesticated animals have had in the development of the human races; but this task is not to be done. We can, however, discern that the Arab without the camel and the horse would not have found the place in history which he has filled, and that our own race could not have attained its place save for the aid which the horned cattle, sheep, and a host of other helpers which we have pressed into service, have afforded. ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... of reasoning is so plain, and so evidently agrees with the interests of all nations, as well as with those of Holland, that it is impossible for any unprejudiced person not to discern that all exclusive companies destroy, instead of promoting, the commerce of the countries in which they are established. The same great statesman already quoted observes, "That the more any country extends its foreign conquests, the more of its stock must necessarily be spent, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... worthily be told in other than the language of spirits: and where is the alphabet of men that can fix that unearthly tongue,—or how shouldst thou from henceforth, or thy fellows upon earth, attain to its delicate conceptions? behold, all these thine intimates are wroth with thee; they discern evil upon thy soul: the place of their sojourn ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... opposition to this administration, and consequently associated with them in his 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 of it have yet come in, is, without a single exception, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... 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, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... gazed as I slowly withdrew; My path I could hardly discern; So sweetly she bade me adieu, I thought that she ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... still more familiar to the watcher—the ting of metal upon metal, as of crow-bars and other tools cast carelessly, one upon the other, in the loading of the shadowy vehicle. Making a telescope of his hands to shut out the glare from the lighted windows of the power-house, Judson could dimly discern the two figures mounting to their places on the deck of the thing which he now knew to be a hand-car. A moment later, to the musical click-click of wheels passing over rail-joints, the little car shot through ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... and is forced to rely upon main strength, which involves a serious expenditure of vitality, with only doubtful results. He works all his life against perpetual friction, because no one had the foresight or insight to discern that this was the flaw in ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... O Lord, and hidden in the moss. But Thou wilt hear, discern and love me; though small, devout am I, and ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... tackling, repair to the river, where you have seen them swim in skulls or shoals. in the summer-time, in a hot afternoon, about three or four of the clock; and watch their going forth of their deep holes, and returning, which you may well discern, for they return about four of the clock, most of them seeking food at the bottom, yet one or two will lie on the top of the water, rolling and tumbling themselves, whilst the rest are under him at the bottom; and so you shall perceive him to ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... for and strive for. But I ought to have remembered that, since you have nobody at your side to look after your interests, it behoved me to be doubly careful. In short, Ethelberta, I am not in a position to marry, nor can I discern when I shall be, and I feel it would be an injustice to ask you to be bound in any way to one lower and less talented than you. You cannot, from what you say, think it desirable that the engagement should continue. I have no right to ask you to be my betrothed, ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... sounds? Of what advantage would agreeable scents have been to us if nostrils suited to their reception had not been given? And for the pleasures of the taste, how could we ever have enjoyed these, if the tongue had not been fitted to discern and relish them? Further, does it not appear to you wisely provided that since the eye is of a delicate make, it is guarded with the eyelid drawn back when the eye is used, and covering it in sleep? How well does the hair at the extremity of the ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... perceive in them, indicate the rhetorician seeking to set forth his motive, rather than the lover pouring out his soul. Contrary to the commonly received legend, I am bound to record my opinion that love played a secondary part in Tasso's destinies. It is true that we can discern the silhouettes of some Court-ladies whom he fancied more than others. The first of these was Laura Peperara, for whom he is supposed to have produced some sixty compositions. The second was the Princess Leonora d'Este. Tasso's ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... search before I was altogether benighted. I had cut a stick to help me along, or I should not have been able to get over the rough ground so well. I had gone on some way when a loud hiss close to me made me start, and I could just discern a big snake wriggling out from a crevice near which I had passed. I turned aside, when I was saluted in the same way. I was about to go back, when I saw two snakes wriggling along across the only place ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... author for her sister and herself; but this could not be the case. Cassandra's character might indeed represent the 'sense' of Elinor, but Jane's had little in common with the 'sensibility' of Marianne. The young woman who, before the age of twenty, could so clearly discern the failings of Marianne Dashwood, could hardly have been subject ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... Bohemians, but are nothing better than thieves and vagabonds, if indeed they be not the chosen people of the prince of darkness himself. She looked carefully all round the room, and after opening one of the drawers of mahogany wood, and taking something therefrom which I could not discern, she approached to the side of my bed, and looked earnestly upon me as I lay. I could not keep up the delusion any longer, and opened my eyes. She continued gazing steadfastly upon me without alteration of her countenance or uttering any word, whether of apology ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... words are indeed full of wit, and worthy of consideration, and occur in the Reply to the Questions of a Provincial (vol. III, ch. 140, p. 761 seqq.). Here they are: 'By the clear and distinct sense we have of our existence we do not discern whether we exist through ourselves or derive our being from another. We discern that only by reflexion, that is, through meditation upon our powerlessness in the matter of conserving ourselves as much as we would, and of freeing ourselves from dependence upon the ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... could faintly discern the feet of the person carrying the light, but was unable to learn anything of the character of the person. He was torn between his desire to escape from the apartment and the wish to learn the identity of ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... brushes that intersect the plains on its borders. Mr. Gould is gifted with the eye of an observer; but from the extreme shyness of its disposition, it generally escapes the attention of ordinary travelers, and it seldom allows itself to be approached near enough for the spectator to discern its colors. Its 'harsh, grating, scolding note,' betrays its haunts to the intruder; but, when disturbed, it seeks the tops of the highest trees, and, generally, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... 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, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... this appeal; and the invalid looked anxiously at his wife. The last sat at her work, which had now got to be less awkward to her, with her eyes bent on her needle, and her countenance rigid, and, so far as the eye could discern, her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... sceptical, who sees what is concealed from all others. He describes the being and unfolds the nature of souls and spirits, and knows both what is, and what is not. From the acuteness of his sight, the metaphysician cannot discern what lies directly ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... how their master willingly submitted to the mandate of the state—which he knew was morally mistaken—in spite of the possibilities of escape, and how he took up the cup of hemlock in his own hand, even offering libation from its deadly contents, do we not discern in his whole proceeding and demeanor, an act of self-immolation? No physical compulsion here, as in ordinary cases of execution. True the verdict of the judges was compulsory: it said, "Thou shalt die,—and ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... He will lose his reckoning and be quite out at sea, though only ten steps from home. He never knows enough to turn a corner. All his intelligence is like light, moving only in straight lines. He is impetuous and timid, and has not the smallest presence of mind or sagacity to discern between friend and foe. He has no confidence in any earthly power that does not reside in an old hen. Her cluck will he follow to the last ditch, and to nothing else will he give heed. I am afraid that the Interpreter was putting almost too fine a point upon it, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... state of uproar. So far as the evidence to hand can be trusted, this stimulative stage, which varies much in races and in individuals, is succeeded by a certain exaltation and mental lucidity—I seem to discern some signs of it in our young friend here—which, after an appreciable interval, turns to coma, deepening rapidly into death. I fancy, so far as my toxicology carries me, that there are some ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Theophilus ad Autolycum, l. i. p. 345. Edit. Benedictin. Paris, 1742. * Note: A candid sceptic might discern some impropriety in the Bishop being called upon to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Johnson could discern a tenuous ribbon of orange—the poppies. And perhaps ahead a little shadow blotted the face of the alkali, which, being reached and entered, spread like fire until it, too, filled the whole plain, until it, too, arrogated to itself the right of typifying Soda ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... the town. I could discern some buildings on top of a small hill, evidently one of the back streets of Yuma. After tying my boat, I hid my small load in some mesquite trees, then climbed the hill and passed between two peculiar stone houses dark as dungeons. They ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... an opinion. The keenness of observation is blunted by food and wine; the delicate perceptions are gone; and what is left of the intelligence is generally devoted to finding faults in your partner's play. The consciousness of mistakes on your own part, which he is in no condition to discern, instead of suggesting charity, induces irritation, and you are persuaded, till you get the next man, that you are mated with the worst player in all Christendom. Moreover, that 'one more rubber' with which you propose to finish is generally ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... half-scornful references to "bread-throwing," she joined with evident pleasure in the badinage and more practical fun which struck the note of the supper. Only Orde thought to discern even in her more boisterous movements a graceful, courteous restraint, to catch in the bend of her head a dainty concession to the joy of the moment, to hear in the tones of her laughter a reservation of herself, which nevertheless was not at all ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... the top of the stairs, had stretched out his hand to feel his way by the wall, and had paused to listen for a sound or to discern a glimmer of light to guide him, when suddenly the air about him seemed to break into life, and before he had time to turn and throw his back against the wall, strong arms were about his shoulders and legs. In an instant ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... 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
... small restaurant that nestles at the foot of the Roseg Glacier. Then its scarred sides, brightened by the crimson and violet rays of the setting sun, looked friendly and inviting. Though its base was a good mile distant across the snow-smoothed surface of the ice, she could discern every crevice and ledge and steep couloir. Now, all these distinguishing features were merged in the sea-blue mist. The great wall itself seemed to be one vast, unscalable precipice, capped by a series ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... prove this to be the fact? No! if you shall ever know anything of the Christian struggle with innate corruption; if you shall ever, in the expressive phrase of Scripture, have your senses exercised as in a gymnasium [1] to discern good and evil, and see yourself with self-abhorrence; your views will harmonize most profoundly and exactly with theirs. And, furthermore, you will not in the process create any new sinfulness. You will merely see the existing depravity of the human heart. You will simply see what is,—is ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... speaking, it is a preference of sound to sense. But the man, and especially the father, who is not fond of babies; who does not feel his heart softened when he touches their almost boneless limbs; when he sees their little eyes first begin to discern; when he hears their tender accents; the man whose heart does not beat truly to this test, is, to say the best of ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... from the man. By infinitely gradual sidelong slitherings he moved a few paces from the door of Mother Holf's house, and stood six feet perhaps, or eight, on the right-hand side of it. The three came on. He strained his eyes in the effort to discern their features. In that dim light certainty was impossible, but the one in the middle might well be Bauer: the height, the walk, and the make were much what Bauer's were. If it were Bauer, then Bauer had friends, and Bauer and his friends seemed to be stalking some game. Always most carefully and ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... partly apply such remedies to the disease as being very noxious and nothing meet; to the high displeasure of God, great infamy to the Faculty, and the grievous damage and destruction of divers of the King's people, most especially of them that cannot discern the cunning ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... mind, and she could not ascertain which of them was king Nala. And at whomsoever (among them) she looked, she regarded him to be the king of the Nishadhas. And filled with anxiety, the beautious one thought within herself, "Oh, how shall I distinguish the celestials, and how discern the royal Nala?" And thinking thus, the daughter of Vidarbha became filled with grief. And, O Bharata, recollecting the marks belonging to the celestials, of which she had heard, she thought, "Those attributes of the celestials, of which I have heard ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... conditions born of a phenomenal material progress have deadened the sense as to what constitutes real progress, and that the working-woman of to-day contends not only with visible but invisible obstacles, the nature of which we are but just beginning to discern. Twenty years ago one of the wisest of modern French thinkers, M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, wrote of women wage-earners: "From the economic point of view, woman, who has next to no material force, and whose arms are advantageously ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... who have done no wrong.] & of at sou{m}me [gh]et arn su{m}me such sotte[gh] for madde, As lyttel barne[gh] on barme at neuer bale wro[gh]t, & wy{m}men vnwytt at wale ne coue at on hande fro at o{er} for[24] alle is hy[gh]e worlde, 512 [Sidenote: And there are others who cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand.] Bitwene e stele & e stayre disserne no[gh]t cu{n}en, What rule renes i{n} rou{n} bitwene e ry[gh]t hande & his lyfte, a[gh] his lyf schulde lost be er-for; [Sidenote: There are ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... showed an ardent submissive affection which promised to fulfil his most agreeable previsions of marriage. It had once or twice crossed his mind that possibly there was some deficiency in Dorothea to account for the moderation of his abandonment; but he was unable to discern the deficiency, or to figure to himself a woman who would have pleased him better; so that there was clearly no reason to fall back upon but ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... 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 ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to all are here: The planets seven, the gloomy air, Hell, and the Furies' forked hair, Pluto's blue fire, and Hecat's tree, With magic spells so compass thee, That no eye may thy body see! So, Faustus, now, for all their holiness, Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not be discern'd. ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... 12.—In these two verses, as in the preceding, the thoughtful reader will discern a beautiful allusion in the history of these witnesses, to the death and life of our blessed Master. "For if they have been planted together in the likeness of his death, they shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection." Yes, they have communion with him in death and life,—in grace ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... as a need. Through needs we become persons. The capacity for dissatisfaction is the sublime thing in man. We can know our poor estate. We can say, That which I am I would not be. Passing the blind point of appetite, we come into the region of want or need; if we then can discern what is requisite to supply this need, we may be said to have a desire. That desire, if specific and urgent, we ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... resumption of my ring, as well as of the bear's grease in moderation, are the last marks I can discern, now, in ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... religious sentiment, and made that the basis of its poetry,—the Indo-European genius places its highest spiritual life in the imaginative reason, and makes that the basis of its poetry, we are none the better for wanting the perception to discern a natural law, which is, after all, like every natural law, irresistible; we are none the better for trying to make ourselves Semitic, when Nature has made us Indo-European, and to shift the basis of our poetry. We may mean well; all manner of good may happen ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... Thursday, the 28th of April, Jeanne was able to discern from the heights of Olivet the belfries of the town, the towers of Saint-Paul and Saint-Pierre-Empont, whence the watchmen announced her approach. The army descended the slopes towards the Loire and stopped at the Bouchet ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... Creoles, upon coffee mixed with rice boiled in water. He was delighted with the order and neatness which prevailed in the little cottage, the harmony of the two interesting families, and the zeal of their old servants. 'Here,' exclaimed he, 'I discern only wooden furniture, but I find serene contenances, and hearts of gold.' Paul, enchanted with the affability of the governor, said to him, 'I wish to be your friend; you are a good man.' Monsieur de la ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... you not see anything out of the common?' They replied that they saw nothing unusual. 'I do not know,' says Leif, 'whether it is a ship or a skerry that I see.' Now they saw it, and said that it must be a skerry. But he was so much more sharp-sighted than they, that he was able to discern men upon the skerry. 'I think it best to tack,' says Leif, 'so that we may draw near to them and be able to render them assistance, if they stand in need of it. And if they should not be peaceably disposed, we shall have better command of the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... of European Science and Literature during the last half century, we may discern the great currents, or chief tendencies, of speculative thought, in so far as it bears on the evidences and doctrines of Religion, in several distinct but closely related systems of opinion, which, whether ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... characteristic of any state of feeling as the nature of the diffusive wave that embodies it, or the various organs specially roused into action by it, together with the manner of the action. The only drawback is our comparative ignorance, and our inability to discern the precise character of the diffusive currents in every case; a radical imperfection in the science of mind as constituted ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... garments. Prying loose another lump, Alfred, holding the substance at arm's length, scrutinizing it closely, endeavoring to analyze it. A "cluck-cluck" caused him to look aloft and there, on a beam, sat ten or twelve contented "dominicker" hens. He could discern but half of their bodies—that part that goes over the fence last. Rudely awaking the invalid, Alfred brushing, picking and pinching the white and greenish bumps from face and night-shirt, indulging in language not proper even on a Texas ranch, he slowly ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... profession, who duly printed and published their criticisms. The awful Churchill's favourite seat was in the front row of the pit, next the orchestra. "In this place he thought he could best discern the real workings of the passions in the actors, or what they substituted instead of them," says poor Tom Davies, whose dread of the critic was extreme. "During the run of 'Cymbeline,'" he wrote apologetically ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... words applied to that whole situation of hers with her father which he was beginning dimly to discern. In his boyish admiration and compassion he took both her hands in his. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the side of Rudolf, when he was aroused by the sound of a voice, whose tones even at this dreadful moment thrilled through his soul with horror. Enveloped in a thick fog which had been gradually spreading around the scene of the combat, he could discern the fiend Heidelberger and his charmed circle; with an air of triumph they chanted the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... not expect to sleep, yet she did sleep, and it seemed to have been only a moment until Florence called her. She followed Florence outside. It was the dark hour before dawn. She could discern saddled horses being held by cowboys. There was an air of hurry and mystery about the departure. Helen, who came tip-toeing out with Madeline's other guests, whispered that it was like an escape. She was delighted. The others were amused. To Madeline ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... of granite piled one upon another, and beetling like battlements far above them. While two of the men remained in the camp with the horses, Captain Bonneville, accompanied by the other men [man], set out to climb a neighboring height, hoping to gain a commanding prospect, and discern some practicable route through this stupendous labyrinth. After much toil, he reached the summit of a lofty cliff, but it was only to behold gigantic peaks rising all around, and towering far into the snowy regions of the atmosphere. Selecting ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... me, bearing the emblems and trophies of a king. They were as a series of great historical events, and I beheld behind them, following and followed, an awful and indistinct image, like the vision of Job. It moved on, and I could not discern the form thereof, but there were honours and heraldries, and sorrow, and silence, and I heard the stir of a profound homage performing within the breasts of all the witnesses. But I must not indulge myself farther on this subject. I cannot hope to excite in you the emotions with ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... consequence of delicacy. Freedom of conduct has emancipated many women's minds; but my conduct has most rigidly been governed by my principles, till the improvement of my understanding has enabled me to discern the fallacy of prejudices at war with ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... next day a traveling-carriage passed through the Barriere d'Enfer, so covered with dust and scratches that no one could discern the arms. The four horses that drew it went at a rapid pace, until it arrived before an hotel of handsome appearance, in the Rue de la Jussienne, at the door of which two men, one of whom was in full dress, were waiting. The carriage entered the courtyard of ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... care; for it came in contact with a nicely arranged bandage of cloth, which was even now moist with some spirituous liquid. But what perplexed him most, was the peculiar light, with the aid of which, though dim, he could discern every object so distinctly. It could not proceed from a candle—it was too generally diffused; nor from the fire—it was too gray, and did not flicker; nor from the moon—it was not silvery enough: from what then did it proceed? It appeared the most like daylight; but this it could ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... hour later, we caught a glimpse of him near a sharp turn in the road; after that we waited in vain, with our eyes fixed on the Kulm; not a sign could we discern of him. At last I grew anxious. 'He ought to be ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... tried to smile, and she tried to make one of her most brilliant remarks, as she congratulated her father on his happiness; yet it was not like herself, and Natalie could see, what Mr. Santon in his blindness of joy did not discern,—there was no heart in his daughter's mechanical tones. Winnie had not as yet seen her intended mother-in-law; she might be all that could be desired of one standing in that peculiar relation, and she might be otherwise; it was not that ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... the tall masts, by the distances of the sea, and by the vastness of the heavens, the small black figures stood silent on the quarter-deck. But one of those men was bound half-naked to the rigging, and two faced each other in attitudes that by outline alone, for we could discern the features of neither, revealed antagonism ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... called out the old host, fearful of alarming his daughters. The little party had crowded so completely round Mr. Tupman, that they could not yet clearly discern the nature of ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... dragoman was lying a-gain in order to prevent another expedition into ominous Turkey, but after all if the commander, of the cavalry had suddenly turned the light of his favour from the correspondent it was only a proceeding consistent with the nature which Coleman now thought he was beginning to discern, a nature which can never think twice in the same place, a gageous mind which drifts, dissolves, combines, vanishes with the ability of an aerial thing until the man of the north feels that when he clutches it with full knowledge of his senses he is only the victim ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... during part of the morning; and divine service was performed on board of the ships. In the afternoon and through the night the fleet held on its course. Torbay was the place where the Prince intended to land. But the morning of Monday the fifth of November was hazy. The pilot of the Brill could not discern the sea marks, and carried the fleet too far to the west. The danger was great. To return in the face of the wind was impossible. Plymouth was the next port. But at Plymouth a garrison had been posted under the command of Lord Bath. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to the end we may with better ease Discern the true discourse, vouchsafe to show What were the times foregoing near to these, That these we may with better profit know. Tell how the world fell into this disease; And how so great distemperature did grow; So shall we see with what degrees it came; How things ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... but I knew that his young eyes were keener than mine, that he had learnt to look into the inmost heart of things in that baptism of fire, that travail of freedom, where desolation blossoms and hell sprouts like a weed. Through the grey he could discern the triumph of the blue and the white of peace, when the work of the brown shall be done. It was an allegory. More he told me, too, in his simple country speech, so good to hear in a foreign land: of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... themselves. They passed out of sight, and reappeared and slipped back over the parapet again without the Germans being any the wiser. Hard luck! It is an unaccommodating world! They found that the patrol which had examined the bags at night had failed to discern that they were old and must have been there for ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... bay of Aros, on the eastern shores of the island of Mull, they found their first resting-place, but there they feared treachery from a lord of Appin. For the starry eyes of Deirdre were swift to discern evil that the eyes of the Sons of Usna could not see. Thus they fared onward until they reached the great sea-loch of Etive, with hills around it, and Ben Cruachan, its head in mist, towering above it like a watchman placed there by Time, to wait and to watch over the ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... cords cut from our wrists, and, in one moment after, the sound of the departing boat fell upon our gratified ears. We were alone, and the first use we made of our regained liberty, was to take the mufflings from our faces. All was dark around, nor could we discern any object except the faint phosphoric light that marked the margin of the waves here and there, like golden threads, as they broke at ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... rails lined with soldiers; immense four-funneled men-of-war; and brightly lighted, white hospital ships, with their red crosses outlined in electric lights. The landing officer left us in a little motor-boat. We watched him glide slowly shoreward, where we could faintly discern through the dusk the white of the tents that were the headquarters for the people at Lemnos; to the right of the tents we could see the hospital for wounded Australians and New-Zealanders. A French battleship ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... thunder rolled over their heads as if an aerial army were meeting and charging in the sanguinary fight. It was an age of superstition, and the shivering soldiers thought that they could distinctly discern the banners of the battling hosts. Eagerly and with awe they watched the surgings of the strife as spirit squadrons swept to and fro with streaming banners of fire, and hurling upon each other the thunderbolts of the skies. At length the storm of battle seemed to lull, or, rather, to pass ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... finishes all. I should be glad to see our suppliant negotiator in the act of putting his feather to the ear of the Directory, to make it unclench the fist, and, by his tickling, to charm that rich prize out of the iron gripe of robbery and ambition! It does not require much sagacity to discern that no power wholly baffled and defeated in Europe can flatter itself with conquests in the West Indies. In that state of things it can neither keep nor hold. No! It cannot even long make war, if the grand bank and deposit of its force is at all in the West Indies. But here a scene opens ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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 are carried on during darkness. ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... who acknowledged his greeting with excessive politeness, and then remained perfectly silent as before. Without noticing anybody, Sanine took up his position by the window, eyeing Semenoff and the others with great curiosity as he sought to discern what the patient and those about him actually felt and thought. Semenoff remained motionless, breathing ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... on the ——— Fiord, looking over the bronzed feces of the stolid but kindly peasants who lounged silently around, trying to see if I could detect in one a resemblance to the picture I had formed in my mind of "Olaf of the Mountain," or could discern in any eye a gleam of special interest to show that its possessor was on the watch for an ...
— Elsket - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... When I looked back, at the turn of the road, Aunt Jane was standing on the door-step, shading her eyes and peering across the level fields. I knew what it meant. Beyond the fields was a bit of woodland, and in one corner of that you might, if your eyesight was good, discern here and there a glimpse of white. It was the old burying-ground of Goshen church; and I knew by the strained attitude and intent gaze of the watcher in the door that somewhere in the sunlit space between Aunt Jane's door-step and the little country graveyard, the ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... groups, instead of producing more, plan to possess themselves with violence of the wealth produced by others. At home, the social classes, unable to resist, are threatened; abroad, the vanquished, equally unable to resist, are menaced, but in the very menace it is easy to discern the anxiety of the winners. Confusion, discomfort and dissatisfaction ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... 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 ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... an irreproachable life, and had not hitherto been remarked for any singularity; whether that she had met with no occasion to excite her genius, or that the unskilful eyes of those who conversed with her had not been able to discern her uncommon merit. It is easy to imagine, that the present situation of France was an interesting object even to persons of the lowest rank, and would become the frequent subject of conversation: a young prince, expelled his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... air not to be denied, "I believe I can discern a point of honor as well as you. I fail to see that you have ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... preparing to spring upon you." Instantly I cocked my rifle and fired into the bushes; they were so dense that I could hardly discern the outline of the beast, who had me in full view, and was crouching preparatory to making a leap. I called to my friend to shoot, as the density of the thicket made it very probable that my fire would be lost, by the ball glancing ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... inquisitiveness is seconded by great activity, scrambled in at a high window, but found the stairs within broken, and could not reach the top. Of the other tower we were told that the inhabitants sometimes climbed it, but we did not immediately discern the entrance, and as the night was gathering upon us, thought proper to desist. Men skilled in architecture might do what we did not attempt: They might probably form an exact ground-plot of this venerable ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... of this remark, Ling took his departure; but in spite of the most assiduous watchfulness he was unable to discern any of the three obliging persons to whose efforts his success had ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... going at full speed, and although the engines were reversed at the first alarm, the impetus of her awkward bulk had carried her far away from the spot where the girl fell; and now the boys could just barely discern her through the deepening dusk. The harbour had been rough all day, and the waters still rolled uneasily. Fortunately, it was not very cold, or the swimmers' case had been well-nigh hopeless. As it was, the only chance of their deliverance hung upon their endurance. ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... right,' he repeated. 'I'll stop that rumour at its source. I can't guess how it started; for aught I know, some enemy hath done this, though I don't quite discern the motive. Thank you very much for telling me, and still more for refusing to believe that I could treat Mr Yule in that way, even as a matter of business. When I said that I was despicable, I didn't mean that I could sink quite to such a point as that. If only ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... beautiful harbor of Cronstadt, in Russia, and I distinctly remember that the entrance was so narrow and land-locked, that we could scarcely discern its precise location until we had suddenly entered it. The passage from earth to Heaven is not unlike the ending of the voyage of a ship, even although many of them reach the harbor in a dismantled condition. Many a storm has been encountered, and while sails have been torn to shreds, ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... ulterior work of the evolution of myth, which in the elementary fact of its primitive essence had its origin in the predisposition of mind and body, that we may discern the interchangeable germ and origin both of myth and science. If, therefore; the rationale of science cannot be found in the general form of mythical representations, the matter which serves to exercise the mind; ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... Shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... through the periscope so, it was easy enough to understand the feeling of power which might well come to the master of a submarine in war time. The sub can be lying there—in dark or bright water will make no difference; on such a day no eye is going to discern the white bone of the moving periscope; and he can be standing there, with a quick peek now and then to see what is going on above him; and by and by she can come swinging along majestically in her arrogance and power—the greatest battleship afloat, ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... it was impossible to discern anything upon the steep banks of the little creek which had fairly forced its hospitality upon me; so, carefully fastening my painter to the fallen tree, I hastily disappeared below my hatch. During the night the mercury fell to six degrees above zero, but my quarters were so comfortable ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... attention than white letters upon a black background. Many such psychological problems have been worked out. They are valuable, but they have no place in this work, since our task here is not to deal with averages, but rather with variations in individuals—how to discern them and how to ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... might be theirs. Well, to 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 ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... northwest corner you will presently come upon the worn contours of Chiquito River, and, maybe, if your eyes are good, discern the silent witness ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... hiding-place and make some movement toward preparing either an ambush or a sudden surprise. Tyope remained motionless for a while. He glanced across the space where the fire had been burning; but every spark was gone, and it was too dark to discern anything. He finally rose to his knees slowly and cautiously, and turned his eyes in the opposite direction. There also was an open space, and the dim starlight enabled him to discover that between his station and the nearest tree something similar to a rock or ledge ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... necessity, that he understands nought else. And forasmuch as 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. ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. I got used to it afterwards; I did not see it any more; I had no time. I had to keep guessing at the channel; I had to discern, mostly by inspiration, the signs of hidden banks; I watched for sunken stones; I was learning to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew out, when I shaved by a fluke some infernal sly old snag that would have ripped the life out of the tin-pot steamboat ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... body surmounted by the massive face, broader than it was long. The ugly face was chiefly remarkable, according to the confession of its owner, for its expression of contentment, though the observant might discern "sense lowering in the penthouse of his eye." Like most giants, he overtaxed his strength, both mentally and physically. Whatever he did he did with all his mighty energy. He loved, hated, worked, played, at white heat as it were, and withered up his forces with the flame they fed. In nothing did ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... stratagems for baffling pursuit practiced in Indian warfare, none perhaps are so often resorted to as that of wading up and down shallow streams, in whose beds no foot-print may be left that eye of man can discern, or scent thereof upon the water that nose of dog can detect. That the savages they were now pursuing had to this intent availed themselves of one or the other of these three streams there could be no doubt, but hardly ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... called gas, which made the city infinitely more interesting to look at by night than by day; but the most extraordinary thing in reference to the flame in the lamps was, that this appeared to be produced without the medium of either oil or wick, nor could I discern the cause of the lighting. The houses have from three to seven stages or stories, one of which is underground—each stage containing at least two rooms. The walls fronting the streets are of brick or stone, and the interior of woodwork; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... Uruapa, or of venturing to climb by night the series of precipices called the Cuesta de Curu, over which we should have had to pass. But such a place as Curu for Christians to pass the night in! A few miserable huts filled with Indians, and not, so far as we could discern, even an empty shed, where we might rest under cover. However, there was no remedy. The arriero had already unloaded his mules, and was endeavouring to find some provender for them and the poor horses. It was quite dark, but ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... in width, suddenly displayed itself, and we had not gone far before we came in sight of Honfleur. The mist occasioned by the intense heat, prevented us from seeing distinctly the opposite towns of Havre and Harfleur: we could only just discern the spire of the latter, and the long projecting line of the piers and fortifications of Havre. The great river rolls majestically into the British Channel between these two points, and forms the bay of Honfleur. About four miles higher up the stream where it narrows, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... however, is seemly, with fingers long, tapering, and well-set, and shining nails. My neck is longer and thinner than the rule, my chin is divided, my lower lip thick and pendulous, my eyes are very small, and it is my wont to keep them half-closed, peradventure lest I should discern things over clearly. My forehead is wide and bare of hair where it meets the temples. My hair and beard are both of them yellow in tint, and both as a rule kept close cut. My chin, which as I have said already is marked by a division, is covered in its lower ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... lay of the land over which this man held ever a watchful eye while he overlooked constantly the bigger, better things of life. With such accuracy of observation of minute details, looking inwardly and not outwardly, what a character would have been his. As far as we could discern this land was mostly stone piles and bushes, with growth of evergreen and deciduous trees in some ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... flickering shadows 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 eloquence, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... people about better hickories and you discern first that the subject has never been brought to their attention. On further discussion, when they are made to understand that worthwhile hickories can be grown, you come to the balking point. It's the crop! It's too far off! People do not let the time question bother them when they set out the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... as the dervishes drew in towards him. The enemy's right was now thrown forward, facing straight for the angle of the camp where the British division stood. At a swinging gait came the vast army of Mahdism. I was still near Surgham and believed that I could discern the Khalifa himself in the centre of a jostling, excited throng of footmen and horsemen. He was seated upon a richly caparisoned Arab steed, guarded on all sides by stalwart natives armed with rifles and swords. A troop of mounted Emirs in front and a big retinue of Baggara ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... strenuous section was but a name in the geography-book, is probably indeed a sign of how large, in the general air, he comparatively loomed. The public scene was otherwise a blank to our young vision, I discern, till, later on, in Paris, I saw—for at that unimproved period we of the unfledged didn't suppose ourselves to "meet"—Charles Sumner; with whose name indeed there further connects itself the image of a thrilled hour in the same city some months before: the gathering of a group of indignant ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... pale and stately forms as they collect for fearful judgment! I see the prisoner approach the dreadful bar, his tall form seems.... I cannot discern his features—they float and flow ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... contemporary life, and from inscriptions and advertisements, we are enabled to reconstruct some picture of commercial and industrial operations. We can see the fuller, the baker, the goldsmith, the wine-seller, and the wreath-maker at their work. We can discern something of the retail trade in the Forum; or we can see the auctioneer ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... cannot tell yet, not knowing how much of the fairy nature there is in you. But we shall soon see whether you can discern the fairies in my little garden, and that will be some ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... ye cherish still, Illustrious shades, some hope of us? Have we not perished utterly? To you, perhaps, it is allowed, to read The book of destiny. I am dismayed, And have no refuge from my grief; For dark to me the future is, and all That I discern is such, as makes hope seem A fable and a dream. To your old homes A wretched crew succeed; to noble act or word, They pay no heed; for your eternal fame They know no envy, feel no blush of shame. A filthy mob your monuments defile: To ages yet unborn, We have become ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... Darmesteter declares that ancient Zoroastrianism is, in its main lines, the religion of the Median Magi, even though he assigns the latest possible date to the composition of the Avesta as now existing, and thinks he can discern in it Greek, Jewish, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... impossible to reason ourselves into any consciousness of merit or demerit, if we are moved only by some vague law of nature whose behest, as described by Mr. Buckle, we cannot resist, whose operations within us we cannot discern, and whose drift or tendency we cannot foresee. It makes little difference whether we build our faith upon the god of pantheism or upon the unknowable but impersonal force which is supposed to move the world, which operates in the same ways upon all grades ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... 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
... pages as those of BARRY'S are the aliment of young genius. Before we can discern the beautiful, must we not be endowed with the susceptibility of love? Must not the disposition be formed before even the object appears? I have witnessed the young artist of genius glow and start over the reveries of the uneducated ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... brackets contain etymological hints that may help the student to discern relationships otherwise overlooked. The genitive is given only ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... furth water and that in sundry formes. In one place it would arise uprightly as a spear; in another as a feather; in a trid[72] it sould rise sydelings and so furth, and when it had left of ye sould not be able to discern whence the water ishued. The main thing in the house of Chasteau neuf was the rich furniture and hingings; yet the richest Tapistry that used to be in that house was at that tyme in Paris; the master of the house being one of the Kings Counsellers; yet these we saw ware wery rich; some of them ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... They do not deny that we can conceive it to be within the compass of divine power to have communicated to the world a higher degree of assurance, and to have given to his communication a stronger and more extensive influence. For anything we are able to discern, God could have so formed men, as to have perceived the truths of religion intuitively; or to have carried on a communication with the other world whilst they lived in this; or to have seen the individuals of the species, instead ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... is not your husband, and you cannot long live happily with him. As far as the cloud permits me to see, I can discern that something terrible is about to happen to him. You are in danger yourself; there seems to be a strange fatality attending your fate wherever it comes in contact with that man; it is especially gloomy when complicated by ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... being carried along on more than twenty railroad trains, stretching over a dozen miles of single track. The column was so long that some of my companions and I, when we climbed a high hill near the front end of the column at Bachimba, found it impossible to discern the tail end through our field-glasses. All the hungry people that were being carried on all those twenty railroad trains had to be fed, of course, so that none of us were surprised to read in the Mexican newspapers that the Chihuahua campaign was now costing Madero's Government ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... elder of the Maoris, a full corporal. And off went Tony. He climbed up the cliffs and found himself on a scrubby sort of soil dotted here and there with stunted trees. Away to his right he could just discern the Turkish defences, while immediately in front lay some scattered redoubts of the flanking outposts of the enemy. In the distance was a high, grassy knoll—a perfect place for observing things. He ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... direction, is, it may be, indispensable to the health of my dearest child. I had purposed, madam, with your gracious permission, that Alice should have remained at Martindale Castle, under your kind charge, until she could so far discern betwixt good and evil, that it should be matter of conscience to teach her the way in which she should go. For it is not unknown to your ladyship, and in no way do I speak it reproachfully, but rather sorrowfully, that ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... expect such a revelation, such a new departure would be given? No, not in the way it came.... A former pastor of the Mother Church once remarked that the day would dawn when the current methods of preaching and worship would disappear, but he could not discern how.... Such disclosures are too high for us to perceive. To One alone did ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... do I now discern that the meditation of Nature and her laws, mysterious yet exact, consorteth not with the airy fancies of the Poet's vision, and that our paths are diverse, yet each guiding to ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... a dark one, and those watching anxiously from the deck of the trader were unable to discern her pursuer as she passed behind them. As soon as they were well assured that she must have gone on, the boats were got in, the sails hoisted again, and, taking advantage of every light flaw of wind, they proceeded ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... and puzzled me. She had fainted at hearing of the death of her husband, 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 some ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... the queen has heard and understood you. The time of neutrality is past; we must move the heart of the best and most magnanimous king by our prayers and remonstrances, in order that he may listen to us, and no longer to the insinuations and flatteries of his enemies, so that he may discern his friends as well as his enemies. The king is hesitating only because, in generous self-abnegation, he prefers the happiness of his people to his own wishes and to the gratification of his own desires. A soldier by nature and predilection, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... the eastward, so that the watcher stood upon the windward side of him, and reaching the brink he peered over into the darkness. Of course he could discern nothing. The sea rose and fell with a monotonous roar; overhead the stars twinkled as merrily as they have twinkled over the strifes of men ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... abiding interest in Emerson is shown in his close and eager study of the Journals during these later years. He hungered for everything that concerned the Concord Sage, who had been one of the most potent influences in his life. Although he could discern flies in the Emersonian amber, he could not brook slight or indifference toward Emerson in the youth of to-day. Whatever flaws he himself detected, he well knew that Emerson would always rest secure on the pedestal where long ago he placed him. ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... of view of those who have never committed the folly of studying Kant or Hegel, how thoroughly superficial Kant and Hegel are; and to remind him by moonlight, and in the course of spiritual flirtation on a balcony, of the unutterable truths in theology which only a woman can naturally discern. We are far from wishing to intimate that there is not a good deal of usefulness in such feminine points of view. The argumentum ad sexum, if not a logical, is often no doubt a practical one, and women are right to employ it whenever they can make it tell. And as it would ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... and the heralds from him went. Now, as Eocho lay in slumber, in the night a vision came; By a youthful squire attended, rose to view a fairy dame: "Welcome be my greeting to you!" said the king: "Canst thou discern Who we are?" the fairy answered, "how didst thou our fashion learn?" "Surely," said the king, "aforetime near to me hath been thy place!" "Very near thee have we hovered, yet thou hast not seen my face." "Where do ye abide?" said Eocho. "Yonder ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... before I was altogether benighted. I had cut a stick to help me along, or I should not have been able to get over the rough ground so well. I had gone on some way when a loud hiss close to me made me start, and I could just discern a big snake wriggling out from a crevice near which I had passed. I turned aside, when I was saluted in the same way. I was about to go back, when I saw two snakes wriggling along across the only place I could have passed. I felt that I was in for it, as the saying is. I ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the week," continued Maggie, "we go to the different museums and picture-galleries, and we get accustomed to good art, and we are taught to discern good from bad. We learn architecture at St. Paul's and the Abbey and some of the other churches. You see, Mrs. Ward's idea is to teach us everything first-hand, and during the summer term she takes us on long expeditions up the river to ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... instructions of Congress when he believed France favoured confining the United States between the Atlantic and the Alleghanies, would have had the temerity to take Canada, had the great foresight been his to discern the irritating annoyances to which ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... clearly discern what those persons were doing who came up on my left. They would have been entirely wiped out. ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... Cardinal quietly "Nothing indeed can prevent thee,—no one can hinder thee from walking the world according to thine own will and direction. Thou must take good and evil as they come, and strive thy best to discern between them— and if the love of God cannot help thee—well!—perchance the love of thy ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... because it was single, and I made it single because I would avoid confusion, and was resolved to preserve the three unities of the drama. Sir, this discourse is very impertinent to you, whose judgment much better can discern the faults than I can excuse them; and whose good nature, like that of a lover, will find out those hidden beauties (if there are any such) which it would be great immodesty for me to discover. I think I don't speak ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... brings the work of this decade to a close.[119] La Saisiaz, the record of thoughts that were awakened during that solitary clamber to the summit of Saleve after the death of Miss Egerton-Smith, is not an elegy, but it remains with us as a memorial of friendship. In reading it we discern the tall white figure of the "stranger lady," leaning through the terrace wreaths of leaf and bloom, or pacing that low grass-path which she had loved and called her own. It serves Browning's purpose in the poem that she should have been one of those persons who in this world have not manifested ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... was proud to obey her behest, feel that it was surely a poor love which could drive a lover to his death or the danger of it? Did I not, in my truest thoughts, always recurring and always dismissed, see past the beauty of the face, and, peering into the soul, discern the twin shadows of selfishness and of fickleness glooming at the back of it? Did she love the heroic and the spectacular for its own noble sake, or was it for the glory which might, without effort or sacrifice, be reflected upon herself? Or are these thoughts the vain wisdom which comes ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hands 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." ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... 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 man ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... before a mirror which hangs on the wall. The room is very dingy. A baize-covered table is in the center of it, and around the table stand six or eight chairs of assorted designs. One wall is completely covered by a bookcase, through the glass doors of which one may discern piles of cheap Bibles, hymn-books and back numbers of the parish magazine. In one corner is a small washstand. The best man takes a flat flask of whiskey from his pocket, looks about him for a glass, finds it on the washstand, ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... on board watched the progress of the two boats as they were pulled quickly towards the ship. They hardly apprehended any attempt at cutting-off, as from the ship they could discern the figures of some of their shipmates on shore stacking the sandalwood on a ledge of rock, handy ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... ominous portals I can discern nothing," I murmured. "How can I be privileged to see ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... in the ordinary costume of the Western African native, and in some instances in linen cloaks. This great amphitheatre was surrounded by a high wall with gates, but in the moonlight he found it difficult to discern its ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... I know the thoughts of all men's hearts, and discern their manhood or their baseness. And from the souls of clay I turn away, and they are blest, but not by me. They fatten at ease, like sheep in the pasture, and eat what they did not sow, like oxen in the stall. They grow and spread, like the ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... for the first time in these woods during the summer, this appears the land of enchantment: he hears a thousand noises, without being able to discern from whence or from what animal they proceed, but which are, in fact, the discordant notes of five ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... delusion that thy soul is in some permanent way separate from the great Soul, the divine Eternal. When that veil is rent, thou shalt discern thy oneness with everlasting Life. The second veil is the delusion of enduring separateness from thy other selves, whereas in truth the soul that is in them is one with the soul that is in thee. The world's sin and shame are thy sin and shame: ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... 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
... took a leap more than human; and reaching the beam with his hand, succeeded in flinging himself up across it. Here he sat for hours, the furious brute continually trying to reach him. Night-time then came on with a clear starry sky and moonlight, and the Paladin could discern no way of escaping, when he heard a sound of something, he knew not what, coming through the air like a bird. Suddenly a female figure stood on the end of the beam, holding something in her hand towards him, and speaking in a ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... nothing of the kind, but it was impossible to discern the stranger's features through the thick gauze, although he passed quite close to me. He had not proceeded another three paces, I should think, before my boy had snatched up the shafts and darted across the ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... role of knight-errant which she seemed to discern in him, but he talked earnestly of her future, and once or twice, soothed by his voice, she dozed—but he didn't know it. Indeed, he told himself afterward that her silences showed how his words were sinking in! "It only goes to prove," ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... quite unlike that which unguents can give. As she sat there, one leg thrown over the over, displaying a foot which, even in the heavy nailed boots, would have put to shame the finest foot of the finest English lady I have ever seen, I could discern that she was powerful and tall; her bosom, gently rising and falling beneath the layers of scarlet and yellow and blue handkerchiefs, which filled up the space the loose-fitting gown of bright merino left open, was of a breadth fully worthy of her height. A silk handkerchief of deep blood-red ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... equally wild, assailed the escort and the occupants of the wagons; for this was the rabble: poor citizens, freedmen, slaves, for whom no story of Hannibal and Carthage was too improbable. Nevertheless Sergius imagined he could discern a spirit of irony ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... the situation, as far as their respective staffs could discern from their speech and attitude, amicably enough, though the brigadier was pressing some point. In reality he had renewed his protest against his senior's decision of the morning, and was endeavouring to influence ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... fare. The men came in and took from the dish what they desired; and a large jar was opened, which from its fierce smell seemed to contain a hot and fiery spirit; and that it was so David could easily discern, from the flushed faces and louder talk of the men, which soon became mingled with a gross merriment. The old man brought a mess of the food to David, who shook his head smiling. Then the other, with more kindness ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... merits are he who reads it will discern. To apologize for it in any manner would be to admit that it has grave deficiencies, and such an admission the author would not make even if his conscience impelled him to do so. The book is offered to the reader with the conviction that if the man who laughs is the happiest ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... 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, and he knew that a flood must have come down ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... retraced their steps; but for a long stretch of the way home could discern nobody. When, however, they had gone about three-quarters of the distance, they became conscious of an irregular footfall in front of them, and could see a whitish figure in the gloom. They followed dubiously. ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... official, or rather professional nomenclature, in which he enshrouds its meaning. To be an adept in prison politics is, first of all to know and understand all the prison rules and regulations, not for purposes of obedience, but evasion; to discern the disposition and habits of the prison officers, with the view of conciliating or coercing them into trifling privileges or concessions; to know the various methods of treatment, diet, and discipline at the different prisons, and the character and disposition of ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... platinum-wire that can only be seen when it is made red-hot. With much simpler means, the Spiderling draws from her wire-mill threads so delicate that, even the brilliant light of the sun does not always enable us to discern them. ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... his father, Isaac Hawkins, to whom, in Grove's "Dictionary," I have attributed the invention, took out, in the year 1800[1], the English patent for it. I can fortunately show you one of these original pianinos, which belongs to Messrs. Broadwood. It is a wreck, but you will discern that the strings descend nearly to the floor, while the key-board, a folding one, is raised to a convenient height between the floor and the upper extremities of the strings. Hawkins had an iron frame and tension rods, within which the belly was entirely suspended; a system ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... 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 he was. ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... charms I burn, Oppressed by slavish fears no more; For One in whom I may discern, E'en when He ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... kindred with the houses above which it towers; it looks down into the narrow thoroughfare, the lonelier, because the crowd are elbowing their passage at its base. A glance at the body of the church deepens this impression. Within, by the light of distant windows, amid refracted shadows, we discern the vacant pews and empty galleries, the silent organ, the voiceless pulpit, and the clock, which tells to solitude how time is passing. Time,—where man lives not,—what is it but eternity? And in the church, ...
— Sunday at Home (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... She had not lived ninety years in the world not to be able to discern between true feeling and counterfeit. She was touched, and drew the trembling frame of Margot into her arms, and kissed her twice on the closed, blue-veined lids of her black eyes. "Make him happy, only make ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... address'd: "Ajax, since some one of th' Olympian Gods, In likeness of a seer, hath hither come To urge us to the war (no Calchas he, Our augur Heav'n-inspir'd; for well I mark'd His movements, as he went; and of a God 'Tis easy to discern the outward signs), I feel fresh spirit kindled in my breast, And new-born vigour in my feet ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... cloud which hangs over the creation, we discern rays of light and hope; and gradually come to see in suffering and temptation proofs and instruments of the sublimest purposes of ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... the length of the teeth in Colobomycter; these are restricted to the distal third of the teeth in Delorhynchus. The external surfaces of the maxillae of Delorhynchus are pitted and ridged; Vaughn was unable to discern sculpturing of the corresponding ...
— Two New Pelycosaurs from the Lower Permian of Oklahoma • Richard C. Fox
... jeopardised. In spite of his impulsive temperament, he is not the ruler to allow himself to be influenced by every expression of popular clamour, and to be driven by every ebullition of public feeling, to embark on a decisive course of action. But he is far-seeing enough to discern at the right moment a real danger, and to meet it with the whole force of his personality. I do not, therefore, look upon the hope of gaining him for an ally as a Utopian dream, and I trust that Russian diplomacy will join with ours in bringing this alliance ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... nose, with its long bridge; and the vast lips, which, if they could have spoken, would have rolled their thunder accents from one end of the valley to the other. True it is, that if the spectator approached too near, he lost the outline of the gigantic visage, and could discern only a heap of ponderous and gigantic rocks, piled in chaotic ruin one upon another. Retracing his steps, however, the wondrous features would again be seen; and the farther he withdrew from them, the more like a human face, with all its original divinity intact, ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... dimly discern a tall stump. He ran over to it and on it laid his map, a pencil, his electric torch, his knife, the wires that he had been carrying in his pocket, and the giant fountain pen. Grasping the tip of ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... with infinity, must be imperfect, is evident to intuition; that, whatever is imperfect must have a certain line which it cannot pass, is equally certain. But the reason which determined this limit, and for which such being was suffered to advance thus far, and no farther, we shall never be able to discern. Our discoverers tell us, the creator has made beings of all orders, and that, therefore, one of them must be such as man; but this system seems to be established on a concession, which, if it ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... however, has 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 ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... higher life of which he was capable took shape as a mortal woman, and to possess her was to fulfil his being. With the certainty that she was beyond his reach came failure of the vital forces which promised so much. A pity for it flatters us poor mortals to discern instances of the soul's independence of the body. I would it had been otherwise with Dagworthy; I have but to relate the facts. It was no dark angel that had whispered to him through the hours of his waiting for Emily's ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... all imagined we saw a long point stretching to the S. W. and backed by high sandy looking cones. We hoped that these might be the sand-hills we were pushing for, and our hearts beat high with hope once more. It, however, soon become too dark to discern anything, and at fourteen miles from where we had halted in the morning, we were again obliged by the tide to encamp for the night, as the country behind the shore was densely scrubby, and quite impracticable as a line of route. It ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... But for the gate behind him he would have turned and ran; to scramble back over that, his limbs utterly refused. The delay caused him, in spite of his fear, to discern the very obvious fact, that the shadowy figure was not that of a woman habited in white—as the orthodox ghost of Rachel ought to have been—but a man's, wearing dark clothes. There flashed into Dan's remembrance the frequent nightly visits ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... note. We have been compassed about so long and so blindingly by wonders and miracles; so overwhelmed by revelations of the spirit of men in the basest and most high; that we have neither time to keep tally of these furious days, nor mind to discern upon which hour of them our world's ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... leaves much to be desired. Perhaps in this poem the figures are sufficiently determined, but they are not so with intuition in view. It is abstraction alone that created them, and abstraction alone can discern them. They are excellent types to express ideas, but they are not individuals nor living figures. With regard to the imagination, which the poet ought to address, and which he ought to command by putting before it always perfectly determinate ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of Macon (Montesquieu, who had perhaps foreseen the coming of constitutional government has remarked, I forget in what part of his writings, that good sense in public assemblies is always found on the side of the minority), we discern in a woman a soul and a body, and we commence by investigating the means to gain control of her moral nature. The exercise of thought, whatever people may say, is more noble than the exercise of bodily ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... friendly that they hesitated long enough to discern that the building did not touch ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... second clause the explanation, or analysis, of the destruction announced in the first. So we have here the wail of the parental love of God over the ruin which Israel has brought on itself, and that parental love is setting forth Israel's true condition, in the hope that they may discern it. Thus, even the rebuke holds enclosed a promise and a hope. Since God is their help, to depart from Him has been ruin, and the return to Him will be life. Hosea, or rather the Spirit that spake through Hosea, blended wonderful tenderness with unflinching decision in rebuke, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the country,—which was a long time ago,—our nearest neighbours were the Luscombes. They were very great personages in the country indeed, and the family were greatly "respected"; though not, so far as I could discern, for any particular reason, except from their having been there for several generations. People are supposed to improve, like wine, from keeping—even if they are rather "ordinary" at starting; and the Luscombes, at the time I knew them, were considered quite a "vintage" family. ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... 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 plurality ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... from those that have in them an accursed and destroying, nature; and the power of Athena, first physically put forth in the sculpturing of these [Greek: zoa] and [Greek: herpeta], these living and reptile things, is put forth, finally, in enabling the hearts of men to discern the one from the other; to know the unquenchable fires of the Spirit from the unquenchable fires of Death; and to choose, not unaided, between submission to the Love that cannot end, or to the ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... will not admit to his heart the sense of ignorance will always be a fool; he who is perpetually filled with self-sufficiency will never be filled with much else. And from this point of view one may discern the significance of that doctrine of humility which belongs equally to Socratic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and so near his home that he could discern its roofs and chimneys, the hope which had kept Richard up all through his rapid journey began to give way, and he hardly knew what or whom he expected to find, as he went up the steps to his house and rang the door bell. Certainly not Andy—he had not thought ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... little about it," Mr. Chamberlayne answered, while his jutting eyebrows twitched nervously as he turned away. "Your mother, my dear boy, is one of those particularly angelic characters from whose presence even the thought of evil is banished. You have only to look into her face to discern how pure and spotless she has kept her soul. My old friend Jonathan was very devoted to her. She represented, indeed, the spiritual influence in his life, and there was no one on earth whose respect or affection he valued so highly. It was his consideration for her alone that prevented him from ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... our envy. They may rise very high indeed, but they must always be unpleasantly conscious of a serious reservation in our attitude towards them. And if they could read their obituary notices they would assuredly discern therein a certain chilliness, however kindly we acted up to our great national motto of De mortuis nil nist bunkum. It is this class of success which puzzles the social student. How comes it that men without any other talent ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... years previously, under the name of Philippeville, by Captain Sarmiento. This town, which had been built to bar the passage through the strait, had possessed no fewer than four forts as well as several churches. Cavendish could discern the fortress, then deserted and already falling into ruins. Its inhabitants, who had been completely prevented by the continual attacks of the savages from gathering in their harvests, had died of hunger, or had perished in endeavouring ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... relic, the sishta or seed of it, in the Hamitic peoples and languages: the Libyans, Numidians, Egyptians, Iberians, and Pelasgians of old; the Somalis, Gallas, Copts, Berbers, and Abyssinians of today. We are almost able to discern a time—but have not guessed when it was—when this Iberian race, having perhaps its central seat in Egypt, held all or most lands as far as Ireland to the west, and Japan and New Zealand eastward; we find them surviving, mixed with, but by no means submerged under, Aryan Celts in Spain—which ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the bench of green velvet, and began to ply the ivory fan which 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
... on for a short distance, then gathered about something the nature of which the girls and boys could not discern. In his curiosity, Allen forgot caution and rising from the protection of the bushes he tip-toed over to a more advantageous lookout. In a moment he was back again on his knees beside the crouching group crying in an excited manner: ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... chill. He felt as the mother would have done, in the midst of 'her rocking it, and rating it,' had she been called away before her slow confiding smile, implying perfect trust in mother's love, had proved the renewing of its love. He gave short sharp answers; he was uneasy and cross, unable to discern between jest and earnest; anxious only for a look, a word of hers, before which to prostrate himself in penitent humility. But she neither looked nor spoke. Her round taper fingers flew in and out of her sewing, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... as God sees us; for grace to understand the malice of sin as the saints understand it. It is because their hearts are so pure, that the spiritual vision of the saints is so refined. "Blessed are the clean of heart, for they see God" and in the light of that eternal Sun of Justice, they discern minutest stains, invisible to souls obscured by the clouds of sin, or dimmed by the mists of self-love. Again, it is because the hearts of the saints are so pure, that their love of God is so sensitive. ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... hardly ceased speaking when the illuminated space seemed to melt away, leaving a great opening, through which the spectators looked as if into another world on the opposite side of the wall. For a minute or two they could not clearly discern what was presented; then, gradually, the flitting scenes and figures became more distinct until the lifelikeness of the spectacle ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... from the obscurity of a recess in the wall, and Wakometkla stood before me. The old man seemed strangely moved for one of his stern nature and practical stoicism. Taking me by the hand, he led me to the center of the room, where the light of the sacred fire enabled him to more plainly discern my features, and gazed upon me for a moment without speaking. At length he spoke in a low tone, ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... who, brief 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, ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... pleasure, this, Astolphus learn'd; The Roman, for his brother, risks discern'd, Whose secret griefs were carefully conceal'd, (And these Joconde could never wish reveal'd;) Yet, spite of gloomy looks and hollow eyes, His graceful features pierc'd the wan disguise, Which fail'd to please, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... less secure, the scud thickened, and as we rose towards the lower level of those clouds the mass of them grew more even, until at last the path and some few yards of the emptiness which sank away to our left was all one could discern. The mist was full of a diffused moonlight, but it was dense. I wondered when we should strike out of the gorge and begin to find the upland grasses that lead toward the highest summits of those hills, for thither I was ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... on her head with a blue ribbon, and just a few were left to cling about her neck over the lace tucker. Her slim hands lay in her lap. He glanced at his own—yes, they were Adams hands, and looked little like hard work. He was rather proud that Recompense should discern a family likeness. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... stayed—we were standing where she could not see us—till she had slowly left the grave. We heard the click of the churchyard gate: where she went afterward we could not discern. ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... distinguished chiefly for his skill at putting and wrestling, and attention to his work. The brilliant Sir Humphry Davy was no cleverer than other boys: his teacher, Dr. Cardew, once said of him, "While he was with me I could not discern the faculties by which he was so much distinguished." Indeed, Davy himself in after life considered it fortunate that he had been left to "enjoy so much idleness" at school. Watt was a dull scholar, notwithstanding the stories told about his precocity; but he was, what was better, patient and perseverant, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... affectionate with two of our probationer fellows, Robert I. Wilberforce (afterwards archdeacon) and Richard Hurrell Froude. Whately then, an acute man, perhaps saw around me the signs of an incipient party of which I was not conscious myself. And thus we discern the first elements of that ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... reciprocity. The rights which belong to us as a nation are not alone to be regarded, but those which pertain to every citizen in his individual capacity, at home and abroad, must be sacredly maintained. So long as he can discern every star in its place upon that ensign, without wealth to purchase for him preferment or title to secure for him place, it will be his privilege, and must be his acknowledged right, to stand unabashed even in the presence of princes, with a proud consciousness that he is himself one of a nation ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... one could discern the dim outlines of platoons moving up steadily and at equal distances like ourselves. One could just catch the distant noise of spade clinking on rifle. When I turned my gaze to the front of these troops, I saw yellow-red flashes licking upon the horizon, ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... 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 ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... around us, causing us to cough violently. For fully a minute the great mouth remained 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
... Fortunately Euler appended to his memoir a supplement truly worthy of his genius. Father Lozeran de Fiesc and the Count of Crequi were rewarded with the high honour of seeing their names inscribed beside that of the illustrious geometer, although it would be impossible in the present day to discern in their memoirs any kind of merit, not even that of politeness, for the courtier said rudely to the Academy: "the question, which you have raised, interests ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... there, along the [74] narrow dell, A fair smooth pathway you discern, A length of green and open road— As if it from a fountain flowed— Winding ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... letters with the cash inclosed pouring in by the hundred. For several months, however, after the first publication of the advertisement, "this triumph of mechanical genius," though "not an entirely new article," existed only in the comprehensive brain of the gentleman who had the greatness to discern in the imperfect work of predecessors the germs of ideal perfection. Having no seven-shooters to send, he was compelled to dishonor the requisitions of the expectant "traveler, sailor, hunter, fisherman, etc." While careful to lay aside ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... made an independent study of parts of Strabo, since he drags in several extracts from his history that are not quite in place,[3] there is no reason to think he read Livy or any other Latin author. He would have found reference to the work in the diligent Nicholas. We may discern the hand of Nicholas, too, in the praise of Pompey for his piety in not spoiling the Temple of the holy vessels.[4] Josephus writes altogether in the tone of an admirer of Rome's occupation, attributing the ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... by excess, 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 ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... intelligence can reach,—ideals loftier than imagination can depict! I want no proof of this save those that burn in my own individual consciousness,—I do not need a miserable taper of human reason to help me to discern the Sun! I, OF MY OWN CHOICE, PRAYER, AND HOPE, voluntarily believe in God, in Christ, in angels, in all things beautiful and pure and grand!—let the world and its ephemeral opinions wither, I will NOT be shaken ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... thus the two friends, while they possessed all the advantages of neighbourhood, lived on their own property. I myself cut palisades from the mountain, and brought leaves of Fan-Palms from the seashore, in order to construct those two cottages, of which you can now discern neither the entrance nor the roof. Yet, alas! there still remain but too many traces for my remembrance! Time, which so rapidly destroys the proud monuments of empires, seems in this desert to spare those of friendship, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... are less inaccurate than others, but all of them, except a few shown in contrast, are, in some respect or other, erroneous. It is supposed, that every student who can answer the questions contained in the preceding chapter, will readily discern wherein the errors lie, and be able to make the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... not gratify their hopes; she referred to the ball with the detachment she would have shown in describing a drawing-room show of cottage industries. It was not difficult to discern in her description of the affair the confession that she had been slightly bored. From Courtenay, later in the day, the aunts received a much livelier impression of the festivities, from which it was abundantly clear that ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... us, and they hit on one of our "arts," the literary pirouette they perform is memorable.' Diana looked invitingly at Dacier. 'But I for one discern a possible ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... volcanic ejections are extremely desirable; they can probably only be made from a balloon. An ascension thus made beyond the cloud disk which the eruption produces might bring the observer where he could discern enough to determine the matter. Although the movements of the rocky particles could not be observed, the colour which they would give to the heavens might tell the story which we wish to know. There is evidence that large masses ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... ascending road. Above him sat the dark castle on the top of a grey slope; and, looking downwards on his left, he saw the town sleeping in its valley, its many points of light gleaming through a palpitating mist. He could just discern the other hill beyond as a tone that was lost in the dark sky, a faint luminous spot showing here and ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... it was a prospect which presented him with a lively view of the difficulties of his situation. To his great concern he saw innumerable sand-banks and shoals, lying in every direction of the coast. Some of them extended as far as he could discern with his glass, and many of them did but just rise above water. To the northward there was an appearance of a passage, and this was the only direction to which our commander could hope to get clear, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... before 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 freedom-song of the sea; how restful, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... pointing into a black recess at the far end of the crypt. All that the Master could discern there, at first, was a darkness even greater than that which shrouded the ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... children of 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 ...
— The Demand and the Supply of Increased Efficiency in the Negro Ministry - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 13 • Jesse E. Moorland
... a youth like Stanley shall avail himself of his accidental advantages to treat their great man with levity and disrespect; and all this he has not coolness, sagacity, and temper enough to see, nor to discern that his most becoming and dignified course would be to conduct himself with a seriousness and gravity suitable to the importance of the crisis and of the part he aspires to play and the magnitude of the interests which are at stake. If he believes in his conscience ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... book is to tell the truth), nobody regretted the probability! If we had really known what kind of a man he was, if we had been able then to fathom beneath the forbidding externals, we might have felt very differently about it. But it is not given to man to know the future or even to discern the heart of his most intimate acquaintance! We only saw in him a man who was as unscrupulous as his prototype Napoleon in all matters which affected his own personal ambition, the petty tyrant of the parade ground, who could occasionally ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... inexpressible charm of Mozart's music leads us to forget the marvellous learning bestowed upon its construction. Later composers have sought to conceal the constructional points of the sonata which Mozart never cared to disguise, so that incautious students have sometimes failed to discern in them the veritable 'pillars of the house,' and have accused Mozart of poverty of style because he left them boldly exposed to view, as a great architect delights to expose the piers upon which the tower of his cathedral depends ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... i.e. ([Greek: ek tou ploiou], ver. 32), &c. It should be observed, that it was only the Apostles who knew that His ultimate object was 'a desert place' (ver. 31, 30): the indiscriminate multitude could only discern the bay or cape towards which the boat was going: and up to what I have described as the disembarkation (ver. 34), nothing has been said of His movements, except that He was in the boat upon the lake. The account is pictorial. We see the little ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... turned back to where the dog lay. Standing over the victim, he balanced the rock and tensed his muscles for the blow. The match had long since gone out, but Link's dusk-accustomed vision could readily discern the outlines of the collie. And he ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... persons high in the king's affection; yet for all that, they believed that their virtues would obtain a reward more adequate from Cyrus than from the king. Another great proof at once of his own worth and of his capacity rightly to discern all loyal, loving and firm friendship is afforded by an incident which belongs to the last moment of his life. He was slain, but fighting for his life beside him fell also every one of his faithful bodyguard of friends and table-companions, with the sole ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... new school, refused to let me go to England for my education. That sugar was slumping was reason sufficient for him. Steadfastly had my mother, old school, refused, her heathen mind too dark to place any value on education, while it was shrewd enough to discern that education led to unbelief in all that was old. I wanted to study, to study science, the arts, philosophy, to study everything old Howard knew, which enabled him, on the edge of the grave, undauntedly to ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... expressed by geological terms, or by periods of thousands of years, we draw near to our own tribes, near, at least, comparatively speaking, and behold, here, also, we discern evidence that an ancient culture, as marked as that which built its cities along the fertile water-courses of the Old World, had its seat on the banks of our great rivers; that here flourished in full vigor for an unknown length of time a people whose origin and fate are yet in doubt, though, thanks ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... there was a faint glow 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 ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... cried Eustacie in terror, and, guided by something he could not discern, she fled with the swiftness of a bird down the alley. Following, with the utmost speed that might not bear the appearance of pursuit, he found that on coming to the turn she had moderated her pace, and was more tranquilly ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... intelligent, the essentials, full of significance. She had concealed her amazement from Branch, but amazed she was, less at his news of Craig as a personage full of potentiality than at her own failure, through the inexcusable, manlike stupidity of personal pique, to discern the real man behind his mannerisms. "No wonder he has pushed so far, so fast," reflected she; for she appreciated that in a man of action manners should always be a cloak behind which his real campaign forms. It must be a fitting cloak, it should be a becoming one; ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... nobles of the city. I felt sure I had not erred, and watched him long and nearly; I noted down his form—his gesture—features, Stature, and bearing—and amidst them all, 'Midst every natural and acquired distinction, I could discern, methought, the assassin's eye ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Tractarian Oxford. "A Christian," he says, "is bound by his very creed to suspect evil, and cannot release himself.... He sees it where others do not; his instinct is divinely strengthened; his eye is supernaturally keen; he has a spiritual insight, and senses exercised to discern.... He owns the doctrine of original sin; that doctrine puts him necessarily on his guard against appearances, sustains his apprehension under perplexity, and prepares him for recognising anywhere what he knows to be everywhere."[100] There is a popular saying of ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... all gold when he lay down, but rose All tincture; and doth not alone dispose Leaden and iron wills to good, but is Of power to make even sinful flesh like his. Had one of those, whose credulous piety Thought that a soul one might discern and see Go from a body, at this sepulchre been, And issuing from the sheet this body seen, He would have justly thought this body a soul, If not of any man, yet ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... a yearning for the peaceful secret that, as the orange sunset slowly waned, the great hills seemed to guard and hold. What was it that was going on there, what solemn pageant, what sweet mystery, that I could only desire to behold and apprehend? I know not! I only know that if I could discern it, if I could tell it, the world would stand to listen; its littleness, its meanness, would fade in that august light; the peace of God would go swiftly and ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was, not long afterward, followed by one from Sir Guy Carleton, declaring that he could discern no further object of contest, and that he disapproved of all further hostilities by sea or land, which could only multiply the miseries of individuals, without a possible advantage to either nation. In pursuance of this opinion, he had, soon after his arrival in New York, restrained ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... Michael Angelos to grow old is to grow in greatness; is it to grow less for the Hannibals and the Bonapartes? Had Napoleon lost the direct sense of victory? Had he reached the point where he could no longer recognize the reef, could no longer divine the snare, no longer discern the crumbling brink of abysses? Had he lost his power of scenting out catastrophes? He who had in former days known all the roads to triumph, and who, from the summit of his chariot of lightning, pointed them out with a sovereign ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... nomenclature, How our names differ from our nature, 'Tis easy to discern: "Here lies the quintessence of wit, For mirth and humour none so fit, And yet men ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... Nature, though the wild Winds clash and clang, and broken boughs are piled At feet of writhing trees. The violets raise Their heads without affright, without amaze, And sleep through all the din, as sleeps a child. And he who watches well may well discern Sweet expectation in each living thing. Like pregnant mother the sweet earth doth yearn; In secret joy makes ready for the spring; And hidden, sacred, in her breast doth bear Annunciation ...
— A Calendar of Sonnets • Helen Hunt Jackson
... symptom of it. You must judge of that, Sir. If I fancy I have been wise, and have only been peevish, throw my lecture into the fire. I am sure the liberties I have taken with you deserve no indulgence, if you do not discern true friendship at the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... centre the third grand angle or seventh house or descendant. And lastly, the southern, facing the noonday sun, has at its centre the astrologer's tenth house, or Mid-heaven, the most powerful angle or house of honour.' 'And although,' proceeds the modern astrologer, 'we cannot in the ethereal blue discern these lines or terminating divisions, both reason and experience assure us that they certainly exist; therefore the astrologer has certain grounds for the choice of his four angular houses' (out of twelve in all) ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... only measured it at 12,000 acres, all told. The great tidal wave of prosperity, which sets once in a while towards the shores of all colonies, had that year swelled and risen to its full force; but this we did not know. Borne aloft upon its unsubstantial crest we could not, from that giddy height, discern any water-valleys of adversity or clouds of change and storm along the shining horizon of the new world around us. All our calculations were based on the assumption that the existing prices for sheep, wool, cattle, and all farm-produce, would rule for many a long day; and the delightful part of ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... 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 ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... Cinder-Maid compares at all with the original, one ought to be able to take any variant and see where the teller of it has diverged from the original, inserted new incidents or adopted new ones to local conditions. When one reads over Miss Cox's variants one can often discern such additions or variations introduced by the fancy of the teller. It is even possible that in Cinderella itself the original folk artist who conceived it made use of the Catskin formula to embellish the details of the three meetings of the lovers; even in my own telling I fear there may ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... and have not brain fever. They talk, but don't understand. And I understood nothing either, but now that I see you, I cannot keep back my tears. Don't abuse me like Mark, or laugh at me, as they all do, my colleagues and my sympathetic visitors. I can discern malicious laughter ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... absently. He was thinking hard. Where was that big stone gateway? He strained his eyes in a vain endeavor to discern it in ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... headquarters. Developments had been tumbling over each other so fast that he found himself unable to sort them properly. He wanted to talk the thing over with someone, to place each new lead in the investigation under the microscope in an attempt to discern its true value in relation to the killing of ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... less than the foremost in rank of the city gentry, would more than compensate for the loss of a possible British peerage. Theirs was a proud lineage to boast of and a mode of unfeigned comfort and display. And it took but the briefest possible time for the artful mother to discern that her clever and subtle devices were beginning to meet with ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... cliffs of the islets, scarce the walls of Joyous Gard Flash to sight between the deadlier lightnings of the sea; Storm is lord and master of a midnight evil-starred, Nor may sight nor fear discern what evil ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... has in itself, and knows, and sees there, be determined without any change to that name, and that name determined to that precise idea. If men had such determined ideas in their inquiries and discourses, they would both discern how far their own inquiries and discourses went, and avoid the greatest part of the disputes and wranglings they ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... portray the multiple wants of our spirits than the needful dependent nature of sheep. After the knowledge we possess of our Redeemer, only a slight acquaintance with the characteristics of pastoral life, as it exists in oriental countries, is needed to discern the charming fitness of these comparisons. The similarity is at once striking and most easily understood. Hence it is that our Lord, as well as those who described Him before He came, so often appealed to shepherd life when speaking of the Messiah's mission; hence, also, it is that ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... 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
... stew-ponds. Then, at the proper 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 ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Ireland,—If we required a fresh proof of the pacific influence of the proclamation of the great democratic principle,—this new Christianity, bursting forth at the opportune moment, and dividing the world, as formerly, into a Pagan and Christian community,—we should assuredly discern this proof of the omnipotent action of an idea, in the visits spontaneously paid in this city to republican France, and the principles which animate her, by the nations, or by fractions of the nations, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... them through any achievement of Science or development of Philosophy. They become thereby, if anything, more insistent. Our widening horizons of knowledge are always swept by a vaster circumference of mystery into which faith must write a meaning and beyond which faith must discern a destiny. ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... business done there, unless arms were being stored or taken out), we went back before the workmen returned from their meals; but for several days did we go into the place, gloating over such of the women's charms as we could discern; legs we saw by the hundreds, garters and parts of the thighs we saw by scores: quite enough to make young blood randy to madness, but the shadowy mass between the thighs we could not get a ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... by a blow dealt between the eyes by a hurling slungshot, the young engineer could discern a break in the program, the appearance of a new element that startled and astonished him. He had expected to see the furious Fogg join the mob and aid them in finishing up their dastardly work. Instead, like some madman, Fogg had waded into the ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... effectually and finally abrogated throughout the whole country by an amendment of the Constitution of the United States, and practically its eradication has received the assent and concurrence of most of those States in which it at any time had an existence. I am not, therefore, able to discern, in the condition of the country, any thing to justify an apprehension that the powers and agencies of the Freedmen's Bureau, which were effective for the protection of freedmen and refugees during the actual continuance ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... began to dawn, so that we could discern each other's faces, and made sure that we were not a party of shadows, for besides the obscurity, a mixture of sleepiness and placid delight had hitherto kept us all silent, we looked round on the landscape, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... down the river with supplies for the garrison, and as a convoy from Bougainville was expected that very night, the sentinel was deceived and allowed the English to proceed. A few moments later, they were challenged again, and this time they could discern the soldier running close down to the water's edge, as if all his suspicions were aroused; but the skilful replies of the Highlander once more saved the ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... the essential requisites to success is concentration. Every young man, therefore, should early ascertain his strong faculties, and discern, if possible, his especial fitness for any calling which he may choose. A man may have the most dazzling talents, but if his energies are scattered he will accomplish nothing. Emerson says: "A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... Krim-Guerai. The signal was given; the draw bridge crossed; the Guegues and other adventurers uttered a terrific shout; to which the cries of the assailants replied. Ali placed himself on a height, whence his eagle eye sought to discern the hostile chiefs; but he called and defied Pacho Bey in vain. Perceiving Hassan-Stamboul, colonel of the Imperial bombardiers outside his battery, Ali demanded the gun of Djezzar, and laid him dead on the spot. He then took the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Tomaltach og MacDonogh, authors of the Book of Ballymote, was then carefully produced and called forth prolonged admiration. No need to dwell on the legendary beauty of the cornerpieces, the acme of art, wherein one can distinctly discern each of the four evangelists in turn presenting to each of the four masters his evangelical symbol, a bogoak sceptre, a North American puma (a far nobler king of beasts than the British article, be it said in passing), a Kerry calf and a golden eagle from Carrantuohill. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... trained his countrymen neither to wish nor to understand how to live as private men, but, like bees, to be parts of the commonwealth, and gather round their chief, forgetting themselves in their enthusiastic patriotism, and utterly devoted to their country. This temper of theirs we can discern in many of their sayings. Paidaretus, when not elected into the three hundred, went away rejoicing that the city possessed three hundred better men than himself. Polykratidas, when he went with some others on a mission to the generals of ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... keep the siege until doomsday, if necessary. He saw the gigantic figure of Tandakora approach the fire, eat voraciously for a while and then go away. After him came a white man in French uniform. He thought at first it was St. Luc and his heart beat hard, but he was able to discern presently that it was an officer not much older than himself, in a uniform of white faced with violet and a black, three-cornered hat. Finally he recognized young De Galissonniere, whom he had met in Quebec, and whom he had seen a few days since in ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... resemblance to dat?" inquired La Roche, pointing, as he spoke, towards the sea, which was covered with fields and mountains of ice as far out as the eye could discern. ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... commonwealth, the pillars and the 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
... transport and transpierce me." He considered, and therein shows penetration, that "we have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write than to understand." In itself and its pure beauty his poetry defies definition; whoever desired to recognise it at a glance and discern of what it actually consisted would see no more than "the brilliance of a flash of lightning." In the constitution and continuity of his style, Montaigne is a writer very rich in animated, bold similes, naturally fertile in metaphors that are never detached from the thought, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... such fantastic variety: that, again, is a question to be 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, that the grass should ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... least this merit, that, owing to a keen sense of smell being able to take the place of eyesight, he can, if necessary, drive at random and yet reach a destination of some sort, Selifan succeeded, though powerless to discern a single object, in directing his steeds to a country house near by, and that with such a certainty of instinct that it was not until the shafts had collided with a garden wall, and thereby made it clear that to proceed another pace was impossible, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... growth of myrtle and dogwood, were neither violated in their purity by the approach of bird or beast, nor suffered aught from the sun's distemperature, and as I leaned forward to catch the reflection of my own figure I could discern the clear bottom free from every trace of mud[56]. The goddess, for that the hour was already hot, had doffed her transparent veil and plunged her into the cool water, and now commanded me that having stripped I too should enter the spring. We were yet disporting ourselves ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... 1212, the doge Peter Zani sent a colony to Candia, drawn from every quarter of Venice. But in their savage manners and frequent rebellions, the Candiots may be compared to the Corsicans under the yoke of Genoa; and when I compare the accounts of Belon and Tournefort, I cannot discern much difference between the Venetian ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... especially since we read (John 13:26) that "after the morsel, Satan entered into him." And on this passage Augustine says (Tract. lxii in Joan.): "From this we learn how we should beware of receiving a good thing in an evil way . . . For if he be 'chastised' who does 'not discern,' i.e. distinguish, the body of the Lord from other meats, how must he be 'condemned' who, feigning himself a friend, comes to His table a foe?" But (Judas) did not receive our Lord's body with the dipped morsel; thus Augustine ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... scared away from our friend, but neither would we any more allow our judgment to be talked down by that fluent tongue of his; he should have justice from us, he and his biographer, as far as it lay with us to discern justice and to ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... was to be sein wtin a little bounds above 300 spouts sending furth water and that in sundry formes. In one place it would arise uprightly as a spear; in another as a feather; in a trid[72] it sould rise sydelings and so furth, and when it had left of ye sould not be able to discern whence the water ishued. The main thing in the house of Chasteau neuf was the rich furniture and hingings; yet the richest Tapistry that used to be in that house was at that tyme in Paris; the master of the house being ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... suddenly showed an alarm light, which flashed for ten minutes and then disappeared. The next three minutes after its first appearance passed in breathless anxiety. We could just discern the dull outline of the boats which appeared to be almost on the beach. Just previously to this seven destroyers conveying the other men of the brigade glided noiselessly through the intervals between the battleships and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... works' competence. The same blue waters where the dolphins swim Suggest the tritons. Through the blue Immense Strike out, all swimmers! cling not in the way Of one another, so to sink; but learn The strong man's impulse, catch the freshening spray He throws up in his motions, and discern By his clear westering eye, the time of day. Thou, God, hast set us worthy gifts to earn Besides Thy heaven and Thee! and when I say There's room here for the weakest man alive To live and die, there's ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... for me to reach them. When I tired of trying I would drop into nothingness again. By-and-by these lapses seemed to give me strength. The floating pickles grew smaller and faded away and I began to discern the dim outline of pillows, bed-clothes and bed-posts, and the four walls of a narrow room. I burst the chains of bondage one morning ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... look for, and quick to discern, any promise of talent in the young. "Every one," he would say, "has a book in him, or her, if one only knew how to extract it," and many was the time that he lent a helping hand to those who were first entering ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... snowfall it was impossible to discern anything upon the steep banks of the little creek which had fairly forced its hospitality upon me; so, carefully fastening my painter to the fallen tree, I hastily disappeared below my hatch. During the night the mercury fell to six degrees above zero, but my quarters were so comfortable ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... Sir," said our conductor, "the ingenuity of the mechanism-the beauty of the workmanship-the-undoubtedly, Sir, any person of taste may easily discern the utility ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... incessant inquiries, the Fairy made reply with a sardonic smile. "This perfume," she said, "is not to be found in the world, and how could you discern what it is? This is made of the essence of the first sprouts of rare herbs, growing on all hills of fame and places of superior excellence, admixed with the oil of every species of splendid shrubs in precious groves, and is called the marrow ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... 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 Seamless ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... involution sets in and they lose what they have. The simplicity of the thing is what surprises me now, and that for ages philosophers have been racking their brains with every conceivable fancy, when, by simply extending and following natural laws, they could discern the whole." "It is the old story," said Bearwarden, "of Columbus and the egg. Schopenhouer and his predecessors appear to have tried every idea but the right one, and even Darwin and Huxley fell short in their reasoning, because they tried to obtain more or less ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... girdled the tower, formed in rank. Horsemen in bright dresses galloped up and down the hill. We could see the glitter of brazen helmets, and the glancing of a thousand bayonets. The burnished howitzer flashed in the sunbeams, and we could discern the cannoniers standing by their posts. Bugles were braying and drums rolling. So near were they that we could distinguish the call. They were sounding ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... Englishmen, and Frenchmen 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 were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... shall be delighted," said the doctor, as he led the speechless Miss Bailey away. "It is uncommonly good of you to have forgiven her. But, as you, with keenest insight, discern, she is not very old. Perhaps she ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... the soul of man with intellect, by which he might discern good from evil, just from unjust, and might know what to follow or to shun, Reason going before with her lamp; whence philosophers, in reference to her directing power have called [Greek: to hegemonichon]. To this he has joined ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... 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, and he knew ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... objection to such a farewell formality—which was all that it was to him—and as he passed them he kissed them in succession where they stood, saying "Goodbye" to each as he did so. When they reached the door Tess femininely glanced back to discern the effect of that kiss of charity; there was no triumph in her glance, as there might have been. If there had it would have disappeared when she saw how moved the girls all were. The kiss had obviously done harm by awakening feelings they ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... but especially MONEY, for on the money depends the men. In a good cause, with an educated, intelligent people, every man able to discern for himself the right side of the question presented, there is no difficulty about men; the state has only to say how many are needed, and the want will be promptly supplied. The experience of the last six months ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... commonly supposed in 1873 that the Union Pacific Railroad had been so completely despoiled that scarcely a vestige was left to prey upon. But Gould had an extraordinary faculty for devising new and fresh schemes of spoliation. He would discern great opportunities for pillage in places that others dismissed as barren; projects that other adventurers had bled until convinced nothing more was to be extracted, would be taken up by Gould and become plethora of plunder under his dexterous touch. Again and again Gould was charged with ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... mannered man, That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat; With such true breeding of a gentleman, That you could ne'er discern his proper thought. Pity he loved an adventurous life's variety, He was so great a ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... for baffling pursuit practiced in Indian warfare, none perhaps are so often resorted to as that of wading up and down shallow streams, in whose beds no foot-print may be left that eye of man can discern, or scent thereof upon the water that nose of dog can detect. That the savages they were now pursuing had to this intent availed themselves of one or the other of these three streams there could be no doubt, but hardly one chance in ten that ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... a tall tree. I made a leap at its lowest branches, and a few seconds later was fifteen or twenty feet from the ground. From this position I saw the whole garden. I looked long and steadily, but could discern nothing of importance. I continued to strain my ears to listen, but all was silent save the rippling of the brook that wended its way down the valley, and which seemed to deride ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... short everything is a mystery, even the Seraphin puppet show, is one of those treasures which are met with, here and there in the world, like woodland flowers surrounded by brambles so thick that mortal eye cannot discern them. The man who owns a flower so sweet and pure as this, and leaves it to be cultivated by others, deserves his unhappiness a thousand times over. He is either a monster or ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... drooped dismally; the singer seemed quite chapfallen. Huguette, tired of glaring at her offending minions, again turned her scornful attention to her dejected lover. "Cry-baby!" she sneered scornfully, pointing with derisive finger at Master Franois, in whose eyes indeed the close observer could discern the threatening of tears. Jehanneton came sidling round to Villon, piqued by natural curiosity, and the desire to vex Huguette. "Tell us your love-tale, Franois," she pleaded, and her pleading found an immediate supporter in Louis. The Arabian nature of his ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... light, but in the presence of strangers, different conditions are required. We shall at first be obliged to use another kind of light. By the aid of this light you can plainly see the trumpet, supported horizontally in the air just over his chair, but you will be unable to discern even the faintest outline of the spiritual form holding it; as in using the trumpet, the vital force of both the manifesting spirit and the medium is concentrated in the trumpet in the effort of speaking. Sit perfectly quiet ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... 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 ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... France have any Reason to fault America for acceeding to it? We are independent. The Nations of Europe may acknowledge it when they dare to do it. We have Fortitude enough to maintain it. This is our Business. The Nations may reap honest Advantages from it. If they have not Wisdom enough to discern in Season, they will regret their own Blindness hereafter. We will dispose our ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... salvation of the Union to its fame as the emancipator of a race, had sunk under the combined effects of political money making, inflated currency, whisky rings, revenue frauds, Indian supply steals, and pension swindles. General Grant, though himself honest, appeared unable to discern dishonesty in others, and suffered for the sins of henchmen who contrived to attach to the Republican party an odium which should ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... very closely, trying to discern their enemies among them, but he saw nothing there save a slight movement of the leaves before the wind. It was possible that his foes had slipped away, going up the other bank in some manner unseen. Since he could discover no trace of them he began to believe that it was ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sea-sick. I have tired myself out with reading, and the fuzziness of my unsleeping brain makes for melancholy. Even Wada is anything but a cheering spectacle, crawling out of his bunk, as he does at stated intervals, and with sick, glassy eyes trying to discern what my needs may be. I almost wish I could get sea-sick myself. I had never dreamed that a sea voyage could be so unenlivening ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... in deeply and tramped out into the hills. He walked lightly, as on air, without fatigue. A strange feeling, as if he wished to get away from himself, drove him on. Finally, he reached a point from which he could discern the most northerly corner of the Dead Sea. For awhile he stood in his favorite spot and meditated, though he could not, for the world of him, say what was passing ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
