"Discernible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of an hour she had reached Betty's little cottage, and was standing trying to recover her breath by the shut door. The place had a deserted look, and several overripe cherries had fallen from the trees and were lying neglected on the ground. Susan knocked impatiently. There was no discernible answer. She had no time to wait, she lifted the latch, which yielded to her pressure, and ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... that period the sole actual panegyris. [national festivall The feasts at the beginning of summer may indeed also have been observed at this early period (Isa ix. 2), but in smaller local circles. This distinction is still discernible in Deuteronomy, for although in that book the feast of tabernacles is not theoretically higher than the others, in point of fact it alone is observed from beginning to end at the central sanctuary, while Easter, on the other hand, is for the most part kept at home, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... wonderful—change had taken place in their physical surroundings, too, there could be no doubt. But what it was the boys could not imagine. Of one thing they were sure, however: The law of gravitation had been partly overcome. And a second fact was discernible: There was a surprising rarity to the air they breathed, and had been since the fall ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... air was perceptible on the decks of the frigate, the little schooner was so light that she succeeded in stemming her way over the rising waves, aided a little by the tide; and in a few minutes her low hull was just discernible in the streak of light along the horizon, with the dark outline of her sails rising above the sea, until their fanciful summits were lost in the shadows ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... one consolation, together with a miniature of Louis in full regalia. Who is this haggard wretch with still the vestiges of her wondrous beauty discernible in her perfectly moulded features?—not La Belle Bibi! Oh, Fate—Destiny—how cruel are you who guided her straying feet through the mazes of life! Why could she not have died at her zenith—when her portrait ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... of these arguments are good, and the practical issues of them are worse. For there are certain eternal laws for human conduct which are quite clearly discernible by human reason. So far as these are discovered and obeyed, by whatever machinery or authority the obedience is procured, there follow life and strength. So far as they are disobeyed, by whatever good intention the disobedience ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... respect, he advanced to the Salamander, and after the usual salutation, paid the compliment of offering service. The Salamander, too, in a kind tone, expressed the courtesy required toward travellers and said: "The traces of weariness are discernible in thy countenance. If this arises from journeying, be pleased to halt some days in this neighbourhood; and if the case be aught else, explain it, that, to the extent of my power, I may ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... appeared on the horizon, and we recalled that deep in its heart, surrounded by vast forests and jungles, the faintly discernible ruins of Dungon exist, the ruins themselves covered by tremendous growths of trees. This was the ancient capital of the Moros, and there lie the remains of the first Arab Sultan, that fierce old missionary who brought the Koran in one ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... sitting on the stoop, filling his pipe, but when she joined him he paused in his occupation and pointed toward the plain. The wagon was scarcely discernible, but a rhythmic beat of hoofs still came ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... particularly observed that in polishing no job should be finished immediately after the rubbing-down process; a sinking period should always be allowed. If the work should be immediately finished, the consequences are that in a few hours all the marks and scratches of the paper, etc., will be discernible, and the polished surface will present a very imperfect appearance, although looking perfect when ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... across the face of the moon. Now the long road lay dimly discernible in the pale misty light, now for a time it was dark, so that a coach might have driven unawares on to the greensward, or a stranger stumbled into the ditch by the roadside. Lonely trees shivered at intervals with a sound like sudden rain, and from the depths of distant ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... the dogs, Nettuno keeping close to the side of Uberto in order to prevent separation, since the path was no longer discernible without constant examination, the darkness having so far increased as to reduce the sight to very narrow limits. Each time the name of the latter was pronounced, the animal would stop, wag his tail, or give some other sign of recognition, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... the arm. What he had been touching rose to meet him. It was in the attitude of one that had crept along the floor on its belly, and it was, so far as could be collected, a human figure. But of the face which was now rising to within a few inches of his own no feature was discernible, only hair. Shapeless as it was, there was about it so horrible an air of menace that as he bounded from his chair and rushed from the room he heard himself moaning with fear: and doubtless he did right to fly. ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... said Miss Sylvette de Long, in a tone not part of her role. "When the traffic policeman sticks up his mitt it's time to halt, see?" Lines not before discernible in Miss De Long's face had long since begun to creep out, smoky shadows beneath her eyes and a sunburst of fine lines showing through the ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... seen. Those without flowers contain more leaves, as in Horsechestnut. In the centre of these buds the leaves are small and undeveloped. The flower is very easy to examine, the floral envelopes, stamens and pistils, being plainly discernible. The bud may also be studied in cross-section. This shows the whole arrangement. The plan is not so simple as in Horsechestnut, where the leaves are opposite. The subject of leaf-arrangement should be passed over until phyllotaxy is ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... often discernible between tertiary individuals and their supposed descendants of the present day affords no argument against Darwins theory, as has been rashly thought, but is decidedly in its favor. If the identification ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... arm of the service making marked contrast with the blue he wore and the green he sat upon. I, on the other hand, was haggard from hard, sleepless service and insufficient food, my shapeless old slouch hat and dull gray jacket torn and disfigured, the marks of rank barely discernible. ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... but a highly diversified succession of strata. Examination shows the layers of volcanic conglomerate and lava of which, like layers of brick and stone, the great structure was built. The downward dip of these strata away from the lake is everywhere discernible. The volcano's early story thus lies plain to eyes trained to read it. The most interesting of these strata is the lava flow which forms twelve thousand feet of the total precipice of Llao Rock, a ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... better, as an initiation into literary style, that a child should be told this than that "a subject attracted Catherine's attention." And in genuine forms of minor tradition, a rude and more or less illiterate tone will always be discernible; for all the best fairy tales have owed their birth, and the greater part of their power, to narrowness of social circumstances; they belonged properly to districts in which walled cities are surrounded ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... herself appears in sight, accompanied by the school, chanting the death-psalm. She wore a white robe seamed with black, and Diliana recognises, with a shudder, that this is indeed Clara's shift, for she had herself thus stitched the seams in order to know it; but besides, the No. 7 was plainly discernible on the neck. She walked barefoot, and round her head was bound a black fillet flowered with gold, from beneath which her long white ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... definiteness, and maturity of the associative processes. As Meumann shows, it is instructive to study the qualitative differences between the responses of bright and dull children, apart from questions of sentence structure. These differences are especially discernible in (a) the logical qualities of the associations, and (b) the definiteness of statement. As regards (a), bright children are much more likely to use the given words as keystones in the construction ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... starting-point of a powerful stream of theological thought, and while this stream was swollen from age to age by contributions from the fathers, doctors, and learned divines of the Church, Catholic and Protestant, there was poured into it this lesser current, always discernible and at times clearly separated from it—a current of belief in a process ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... illiterate, who have to depend on memory alone." We must smile at Hirata's good faith in the changelessness of oral tradition; but I believe that folk-lorists would discover in the character of the older myths, intrinsic evidence of immense antiquity.—Chinese influence is discernible in both works; yet certain parts have a particular quality not to be found, I imagine, in anything Chinese,—a primeval artlessness, a weirdness, and a strangeness [112] having nothing in common with other mythical literature. For example, we have, in ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... the woods, sometimes walking against time among the hills, sometimes seated on the ground, brooding. The night was without breath, without coolness. Occasionally he climbed a rounded elevation from which the clubhouse was discernible. No lights twinkled among the barren trees. All in that wilderness seemed asleep save himself. The myriad insects that sing through the spring and summer months had not yet found their voices; there was no ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... day without wind, without character—one of the days on which Nature seems to take no interest in herself and creates no interest in others. The sky was overcrowded with low, ragged clouds, without discernible order or direction. Nowhere a yellow sunbeam glinting on any object, but vast jets of misty radiance shot downward in far-diverging lines toward the world: as though above the clouds were piled the waters of light and this were scant ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... the Portuguese discovery of a sea route round the Cape of Good Hope were destined to rob the Republic of that trade with the East which was the life-blood of its commerce. But, though the blow was already dealt, its effects were for a time hardly discernible. On the contrary, the accumulated wealth of centuries poured itself out in an almost riotous prodigality. A new Venice, a Venice of loftier palaces, of statelier colonnades, rose under Palladio and Sansovino along the line of its canals. In the deep peace ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... flowing sheets, fully three hours before the sloop-of-war could beat up against the latter, to a point that enabled her to do the same thing. By that time, the Swash was five-and-twenty miles to the eastward, and consequently but just discernible in her loftiest sails, from the ship's royal yards. Still, the latter continued the chase; and that evening both vessels were beating down along the southern margin of the Florida Reef, against the trades, but favoured by a three or four knot current, the brig out of sight to ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... the embodiment of energy, stood at the window, hands in pockets, and stared disgustedly out at the dreary vista of sand-dunes and bathing-machines, closed in the distance by a stretch of gray sea mounting toward a horizon scarcely discernible through the drifting mist which hung above ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... suddenly the cultivation ended abruptly on the edge of a sandy desert that, seamed with nullahs, or deep, steep-sided ravines, and dotted with tall clumps of thorny cactus, stretched away to the horizon. The road became a barely discernible track; but the two sowars cantered on, confidently heading for the spot where the fresh ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... abandoning the study of the occult sciences, turned their attention to the more profitable hocus pocus of trade, and soon became expert in the legerdemain art of turning a penny. Still, however, a tinge of the old leaven is discernible, even unto this day, in their characters; witches occasionally start up among them in different disguises, as physicians, civilians and divines. The people at large show a keenness, a cleverness and a ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... a large city lying at the foot of the Alleghanies, and in ascending the Alleghanies fine scenery and great engineering feats are discernible. From this we ran on to Pittsburg, which claims to be the best lighted city in America, the streets being brilliantly illuminated by arc and incandescent electric lights. Nine bridges cross the Allegheny, and five the Monongahela rivers. Pittsburg has been called the "iron city," and "smoky ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett
... the whole neighboring country in panorama. Other houses were discernible at infrequent intervals along the road which wound southward through the lowland between the hills where the boys were and the Vosges Mountains (the "Blue Alsatian Mountains") to the west. Through the long, daylight hours Tom studied the country carefully. ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... there is a man sitting with his arms over his knees fanning a little fire. In the right panel another native sits on his heels cooking a meal; a bamboo slopes across the cell behind him, and supports a poor ragged cloth, a purda, I suppose, and behind, are just discernible his wife and child. These wayfarers make me at once think of a new and original treatment for a holy family, but hold! These passages of light and colour, form fading into nothingness, are they not worth understanding alone, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... their right order. But dark and broken as they are, they yet trail an epic splendour, they bear the whole phantasmagoria of ancestral and of racial memories, of "old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago". These songs and ballads, strung on no discernible thread, are the voice of an enchanted spirit, recalling the long roll of its secular existences; in whom nothing lives but ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... taken as evidence of Saxon workmanship. This shaft is attached to the north wall of the Chapel of St. John-the-Divine (now used as a clergy vestry), which is perhaps the oldest part of the fabric. The undoubted Norman remains consist of three arches in the same chapel, where their outline is just discernible among the brickwork; the fragment of a string-course, with billet moulding, on the inner wall of the north transept; a portion of the Prior's entrance to the cloisters; the old Canons' doorway; and an arcaded recess. Of these, it ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... although, I must confess, there is something about him suggestive of a London Particular, I will quote in conclusion a few of the many witty epigrams which are scattered throughout his pages, showing that he has a sense of humour which is not always discernible in those who would laugh him ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... it could be overcome. To this day the Chinese dynasty is Tartar, but the four hundred millions of people remain the same, having assimilated the foreign element. The Tartars are fast becoming Chinese, although a difference between the races is still clearly discernible. The Heathen Chinee changes not. The Jews and the Scotch are perhaps the races in Europe who preserve their types with the greatest tenacity, but compared with the Chinese they must be considered plasticity itself. Apart from their overwhelming numbers, ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... the defender of their faith, the high-priest of their craft. The scoffers find a grimace in everything he ever wrote upon the subject, from "The Bibliomaniac's Prayer," with its palpable reflection of Watts and its ill-concealed raillery, down to the gentle, yet none the less discernible, mockery of the "Love Affairs." It would be a bootless task to follow the gradual evolution from the frequent authorship ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... obliterated by a brace of shelves built across the corresponding window and brilliantly stacked with ribbons of a score of colors and as many widths. A considerable flow of daylight thus diverted, The Convenience Merchandise Corner, even of early afternoon, fades out into half-discernible corners; a rear-wall display of overalls and striped denim coats crowded back into indefinitude, the haberdashery counter, with a giant gilt shirt-stud ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... outline of walls and houses. This, I knew, was the situation of Catanzaro, but one could not easily imagine by what sort of approach the city would be gained; in the thickening twilight, no trace of a road was discernible, and the flanks of the mountain, a ravine yawning on either hand, looked even more abrupt than ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... appeared, though it was still obscured by the black, heavy mist. "After sundown, the clouds came again overhead, and it grew dark very fast." "Nor was the darkness of the night less uncommon and terrifying than that of the day; notwithstanding there was almost a full moon, no object was discernible but by the help of some artificial light, which, when seen from the neighboring houses and other places at a distance, appeared through a kind of Egyptian darkness which seemed almost impervious to the rays."(487) Said an eye-witness of the scene: "I could not help conceiving at the time, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... people in holy matters; when they demand it, or beg it from him. Which to perform readily and judiciously requires much more discretion and skill, than, upon long deliberation, to make a continued talk of an hour, without any great discernible failings. So that were a Minister tied up, never to speak one sentence of his own invention out of the pulpit in his whole lifetime; yet doubtless many other occasions there be, for which neither wisdom nor reputation ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... the country thereabout is covered, prevent the crater from being discernible at a distance; and this proves that the spot is not considerably raised or otherwise affected by the earthquakes which are very frequently felt there. Sometimes it has emitted smoke upon these occasions, and in other instances not. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... of a poor old Italian Man! Nevertheless in that immeasurable Confusion and Corruption, which struggles there so blindly to become less confused and corrupt, there is, as we said, this one salient point of a New Life discernible: the deep fixed Determination to have done with Shams. A determination, which, consciously or unconsciously, is fixed; which waxes ever more fixed, into very madness and fixed-idea; which in such embodiment ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Nile valley. Asecond centre of development is found in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, not uninfluenced by the older Egyptian art. Through various channels the Greeks inherited from both Egyptian and Assyrian art, the two influences being discernible even through the strongly original aspect of Greek architecture. The Romans in turn, adopting the external details of Greek architecture, transformed its substance by substituting the Etruscan arch for the Greek construction of columns and lintels. They developed a complete ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... are simple, and perhaps, uninteresting; but they serve to exhibit a characteristic of the lower classes of Mexicans. Doubtless, such paltry thieving is the result of a want of animal courage, easily discernible by the close observer of the Mexican race. Of course there are many exceptions ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... book, we will simply say this: It would have been well if Monseigneur Bienvenu had not been a Royalist, and if his glance had never been, for a single instant, turned away from that serene contemplation in which is distinctly discernible, above the fictions and the hatreds of this world, above the stormy vicissitudes of human things, the beaming of those three pure radiances, truth, justice, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... of the tempter, of which our first parents were guilty, betrayed many lamentable symptoms of degeneracy. Pride, ambition, discontent, unbelief, presumption, ingratitude, and an undervaluation of the divine favour, are all plainly discernible through the thin veil of an extenuating apology, with which they vainly attempted to conceal their baseness.—"The woman, whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." And the woman said, "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat." Endowed as they were with knowledge, it ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... the acts and actings of this faith may be more clear and discernible, both by themselves, and by spiritual onlookers; in others, so covered over with a heap of doubts, unbelief, jealousy, and other corruption, that the actings of it can hardly, or not at all, be perceived by themselves or others; so that nothing shall be heard but ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... reproached, and their lower jaw has a tendency to be elongated. Some of them have, it is true, the high forehead of the former: but it always differs by being sunk in at the base. These latter are, perhaps, the descendants of the aborigines of this country, whose characteristic features are still discernible, notwithstanding their alliance with so many strangers? History has, indeed, transmitted to us some of the customs of the Numidians, who were by turns, the enemies, and the allies of the Romans; but it has not condescended to draw their portrait. Juvenal somewhere ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... gaining any reply. Wheeling about, he was returning to the road when an idea seemed to come to him, for, altering direction, he pulled on his bridle, and turned his horse into the garden, now one dense overgrowth. Guiding him along one of the scarcely discernible paths, he checked him at a garden seat, and leaning in his saddle plucked half a dozen sprays of honeysuckle from the vine which surmounted it. He touched them to his lips, and gave his horse the spur. He held the sprays in his hand as he rode, occasionally raising ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... in advance, and, bounding over the dyke, appeared on the road just before me. It was a dog, of what species I cannot tell, never having seen the like before or since; the head was large and round; the ears so tiny as scarcely to be discernible; the eyes of a fiery red: in size it was rather small than large; and the coat, which was remarkably smooth, as white as the falling flakes. It placed itself directly in my path, and showing its teeth, and bristling its ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... might be was not clearly discernible; some said he was an officer in Her Majesty's Service, and others, that he was somebody connected with the disturbances of the preceding winter who was attempting to revisit ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... whence the cry could have come, but kept on her way. Then I shrieked in earnest, and began to run wildly toward her. I think she saw me—that my quicker change of place detached my shape sufficiently to make it discernible. She pulled up, and sat like a statue, waiting me. I kept on calling as I ran, to assure her I was doing my utmost, for I feared she might grow impatient and leave me. But at last it was slowly indeed I staggered up to her, spent. My foot caught, and as I fell, I clasped the leg of her horse: ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... to the Woosung river from the Pacific, the waters of the Yang-tze are plainly discernible at sixty to seventy miles from its mouth, and when near the point where the ship's head is turned from the broad current of the great river into that of the Woosung, a thick, yellow mud rolls out with the tide, and discolors the water as far as the eye can reach. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in November, the day had been unusually fine, and, in consequence, the whole hilly ranges around were clearly discernible, but now the shades of ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the long level of the sand-bank, I perceived a group that became discernible as three persons attached to an invalid's chair, moving leisurely toward us. I was in the state of mind between divination and doubt when the riddle is not impossible to read, would but the heart cease its hurry an instant; a tumbled sky where the break is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he thought, and turned on the other side so that he might see the reality of the world which had been veiled from him before by the vision. But the sea still shone in the distance and the ship was plainly discernible. Was it reality, after all? He closed his eyes for a long while and thought, and then it came to him. He had been making north by east, away from the Dease Divide and into the Coppermine Valley. This wide and sluggish river was the Coppermine. That ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... ruler, indicating the tops of two of these huge plates or planks, pointing, with the universal tendency, to the great ridge, and intersected by fissures parallel to it. Throughout the extent of mountain, not one horizontal line, nor an approach to it, is discernible. This cannot be chance—it cannot be composition—it may not be beautiful—perhaps nature is very wrong to be so parallel, and very disagreeable in being so straight;—but this is nature, whether we admire it ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... world like folds of gray-brown cloth. Beyond Batok we could catch a glimpse of Bromo itself, belching skyward great clouds of billowing smoke and steam, while from its crater came a rumble as of distant thunder. And far in the distance, its purple bulk faintly discernible against the turquoise sky, rose Smeroe, the ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... strongly in the opposite direction till next full moon. Seamen also observe, that in places where the trade-winds blow, the currents are generally influenced by them, moving the same way with the winds, but not with equal force in all places; neither are they so discernible in the wide ocean, but chiefly about islands, where their effects are more or less felt according as they are influenced by being more or less in the way of the trade-winds. It would be of great ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... is discernible from the immediate prospect, we cannot look to an early disappearance of deafness from the race, there are indications at present that deafness is tending to become less. The probabilities are that the future will be able to report advance, and so far as the ultimate results are concerned, we have ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... every particle in nature throws off a gaseous emanation, partaking of its particular shape. These gaseous particles are not discernible with the material eye, excepting when by chance they coalesce, and then a phosphorescent light ensues, ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... fellow was trembling with anxiety, and was actually pale in the face; for a distinctly discernible pallor overspreads the countenance of the negro when under ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... of a monosyllable; and when the young gallant had said the best and most complaisant things which his courtesy supplied, the smile that mantled upon her pretty mouth was so slight and evanescent, as scarce to be discernible. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... was no want of Literary Men discernible from Reinsberg at that time; and the young Prince corresponds with a good many of them; temporal potentate saluting spiritual, from the distance,—in a way highly interesting to the then parties, but now without interest, except of the reflex kind, to any creature. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... migrated to New York in the seventeenth century at about the same time as Claes van Roosevelt. Like the Roosevelts, the Carows had so freely intermarried with English stock in America that the French origin of one was as little discernible in their descendants as was the Dutch origin of the other. Through her American line Mrs. Roosevelt traced back to Jonathan Edwards, the prolific ancestor of many persons who emerged above the common level by either their ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... ago, with 184,000,000 of miles between the points. Now, with this for a base-line, measure the angles of the same stars: it is the same angle. Sitting in my study here, I glance out of the window and discern separate bricks, in houses five hundred feet away, with my unaided eye; they subtend a discernible angle. But one thousand feet away I cannot distinguish individual bricks; their width, being only two inches, does not subtend an angle apprehensible to my vision. So at these distant stars the earth's enormous ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... the prevalent forms and colours of marshy vegetation. Mr. J. M. Lester, in a paper read before the Rugby School Natural History Society observes:—"The wood-dove, when perched amongst the branches of its favourite fir, is scarcely discernible; whereas, were it among some lighter foliage the blue and purple tints in its plumage would far sooner betray it. The robin redbreast, too, although it might be thought that the red on its breast made it much easier to be seen, is in reality not at ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... of charcoal applied to the soil. Whoever will observe fields where coal has been burned, will see that grass or grain about the bed of the former pits, will be earlier and much more luxuriant than in any other portion of the field. This difference is discernible for twenty years. It is the best known agent for absorbing any noxious matter in the soil or in the moisture about the roots of the trees. No peach-tree should be planted without a few quarts of pulverized charcoal in the soil. This would also prove highly beneficial to cherry-trees on land ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... the village in the gathering gloom and was soon out on the heather. Away on the left, but scarcely discernible, was Swart Houe Cross, on Egton Low Moor, and straight in front lay the Skelder Inn. A light gleamed from one of the lower windows, and by it I guided my steps, being determined to partake of tea before turning my steps homeward. I stepped into the little parlour, with its ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... complete was published, in twelve volumes, in 1615. That he frequently shows too much credulity, and betrays a want of taste, must be admitted; but his works are allowed to breathe a spirit of piety; his candor, and desire to be accurate, are discernible in every part of his writings; and his learning, for the age in which he lived, was considerable. In Ribadeneira the line ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the year whose zodiacal sign was that of the "Dog." It seems strange that such an earnest believer in the Confucian doctrine should have had recourse to Buddhism in this matter. But here also the influence of Yoshiyasu is discernible. At his suggestion the shogun built in Yedo two large temples, Gokoku-ji and Goji-in, and Ryuko was the prelate of the former. An order was accordingly issued against slaughtering dogs or taking life in any form, the result being that all wild animals multiplied enormously and wrought great ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... himself in form, he has gained some glimmer of a notion of what artists are driving at. Surely there can be no reason why almost every man and woman should not be a bit of an artist since almost every child is. In most children a sense of form is discernible. What becomes of it? It is the old story: the child is father to the man; and if you wish to preserve for the man the gift with which he was born, you must catch him young, or rather prevent his being ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... mostly men of pure Spanish race—"gente de razon," as they proudly proclaim themselves—though many are in reality of mixed blood, Mestizos. Of this are the better class of shopkeepers, few in number, the gente de razon at best forming a scarce discernible element in the population, which is mainly made up of ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... upon the attention of any one present (chanting them aloud), and would bring down the volume of Burns, and open it, in order that the page might be impressed on the hearer's memory. Sometimes—in a way scarcely discernible—he would kiss the volume; as he would also a book by Chapman or Sir Philip Sidney, or any other which he particularly valued. I have seen him read out a passage from the Holy Dying and the Urn Burial, and express in the same way his devotion ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... yards of the shore— the strip of sand on which they had beached their boat trending along between the woods and the tide-water as far as the eye could trace it. A short distance off, however, a break was discernible in the line of the sand-strip—which they supposed must be either a little inlet of the sea itself, or the outflow of a stream. If the latter, then were they ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... time the preventive cutter was faintly discernible two cables length on the larboard bow. There came another hail—a loud, husky bellow from over the water, "Schooner ahoy! Heave ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... startled him, and he looked up as before. The hammock moved slightly, but there was no appearance of anything wrong. From where he sat he could not see well into it, but the outlines of the child's body were easily discernible through the elastic netting; and at the farther end he could just perceive one of her little feet, where it had escaped from the covering, and rested partly ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... why the improvement of our slave population by law has been so long retarded, and that the same prejudice will continue to have a similar operation, so long as it shall continue to exist. Not that there are wanting men of humanity among our West Indian legislators. Their humanity is discernible enough when it is to be applied to the whites; but such is the system of slavery, and the degradation attached to this system, that their humanity seems to be lost or gone, when it is to be applied to the blacks. Not again that there are wanting men of sense among the same body. They are shrewd ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... Earl of Mar had met with the royal forces under the Duke of Argyle in the neighbourhood, on the morning of Sunday the 12th November, while it was still dusk, he went to the top of a neighbouring hill named Glentye, from which the whole of the moor was discernible, and on which a number of country people were stationed, attracted to the spot, like himself, by curiosity. Being at no great distance from both armies, he could see them distinctly. The Highlanders, who observed no regular order, he compared ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... here is so constantly divided by numerous islands, that its great width is not discernible: it seldom has less than two or three channels, often more: it courses through a succession of bold bluffs, rising sometimes perpendicularly, and always abruptly from the banks or flat land, occasionally ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... in all countries, just as there are nouveaux-riches. In Paris these latter are easily discernible. They have not yet had time to become accustomed to their new luxuries; especially the women, who wear exaggerated styles, and flaunt their furs and ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... half an hour later, and the cruiser was not yet plainly discernible to the naked ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... of appetite or depraved appetite and a disposition to lie down; constipation or diarrhoea; stiff gait; red spots or blotches discernible about the ears and under the neck and belly; in some instances there is ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... which seemed formed to bear the crowns of a whole world; those hands, of which the most coquettish women might have been vain, and whose white skin covered muscles of iron; in short, of all that personal beauty which distinguished Napoleon as a young man, no traces were discernible in the boy. Saveria spoke truly when she said, that of all the children of Signora Laetitia, the Emperor was the one from whom future greatness was least to be prognosticated" (vol. i. p. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... The track was clearly discernible except when the swiftly-flying clouds obscured the moon's light. The soughing of the wind in the tree-tops, together with the soft springy turf, helped to somewhat deaden the sound of Golightly's hoofs. The good horse scented danger in the air and in the tone of his ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... of Pompeii are paved with large irregular pieces of lava joined neatly together, in which the chariot wheels have worn ruts, still discernible; in some places they are an inch and a half deep, and in the narrow streets follow one track; where the streets are wider, the ruts are more numerous and irregular. The width of the streets varies from eight or nine feet to about twenty-two, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... will, good works, and grace, are there defined, with a leaning towards the opinion of the reformers: the sacraments, which a few years before were only allowed to be three, were now increased to the number of seven, conformable to the sentiments of the Catholics. The king's caprice is discernible throughout the whole; and the book is in reality to be regarded as his composition. For Henry while he made his opinion a rule for the nation, would tie his own hands by no canon or authority, not even by any which he himself had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... the young man quitted her at her door, she rewarded his civility—"I must thank you for a very pleasant evening." She always felt that she made that too prim; her lips stiffened themselves as she spoke. But the whole affair had always a primness; this was discernible even to Olive's very limited sense of humour. It was not so religious as going to evening-service at King's Chapel; but it was the next thing to it. Of course all girls didn't do it; there were families that viewed such a custom with disfavour. But ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... ultimate fact about which, explicable or inexplicable, there can be no doubt. Strictly speaking, we have no direct apprehension of any other cause of motion. But experience furnishes innumerable examples of the production of kinetic energy in a body previously at rest, when no impact is discernible as the cause of that energy. In all such cases, the presence of a second body is a necessary condition; and the amount of kinetic energy, which its presence enables the first to gain, is strictly ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... accordingly he kept his eyes and his ears open for a handy weapon with which to jab Cappy through that same old rift in his armor—his passion for a large profit through an adroit and ingenious deal in a commodity where even a very modest profit was not discernible to ordinary mortals. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... building ships was as essential to the development of naval power as was the fostering of a class of seamen. In this respect, therefore, the ship-building of America was detrimental to the objects of the Navigation Act; and the evil threatened to increase, because of a discernible approaching shortness of suitable timber in the overtaxed forests ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... make obeisance to him, receiving in return a small present of grain. This state of things seems to represent the primitive form of Hindu society from which the present widely ramified system, of castes may have expanded, and even now the outlines of the original structure may be discernible under all subsequent accretions. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... angry clang made by the iron scabbards of modern cavalry ringing against the steel-tipp'd saddles and stirrup, betrays their approach from a distance. The clash of the armour of knights, armed cap-a-pie, must have been much more easily discernible.] At once this mighty sound ceased, as if the earth on which they trod had either devoured the armed squadrons or had become incapable of resounding to their tramp. The defenders of the Garde Doloureuse concluded that their friends had made a sudden halt, to give their horses breath, examine ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... badinage was discernible again, but Cairn passed out into the mandarah without replying, where the fountain plashed coolly and the silver mibkharah sent up its pencils of vapour. The outer door was opened by the Oriental servant, and Ferrara stood and bowed to his departing ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... is," said he, "Mr. Bickerstaff, a proper argument for you to treat in your article from this place; and if you would send your Pacolet into all our brains, you would find, that a little fibre or valve, scarce discernible, makes the distinction between a politician and an idiot. We should therefore throw a veil upon those unhappy instances of human nature, who seem to breathe without the direction of reason and understanding, as we should avert our eyes with abhorrence from such as ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... repelling the multitude, who do not choose to risk their brains through unlimited pages of labyrinthine rhetoric; some, perhaps, because of their doubtful paternity, evidences of French origin being in many places discernible. Here, however, there appears a manifest improvement. This story is exquisitely simple in conception, and the narration is mostly full of ease and grace, although the unfolding of the plot is less direct than might have been expected from an author who professes so deep a regard for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Already a wintry wilderness of garden without, upon which snow and sleet are pitilessly beating, is barely discernible. By the window looms, through the dusk, the shadowy shape of an enormous stuffed tiger, crouched as if about to spring upon a spare white-haired man in neat dark green uniform, who, seated at a writing-table covered with papers and official documents, ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... plying hither and thither; one noble sailing-vessel, with all sails set, is slowly ploughing her way down toward the Dardanelles - probably a grain- ship from the Black Sea - and the smoke from a couple of steamers is discernible in the distance. Flourishing Greek fishing-villages and vine- growing communities occupy this beautiful strip of coast, along which the Greeks seem determined to make the Cross as much more conspicuous than the Crescent as possible, by rearing it ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... hill-tops in the valley below the palace were just discernible in the light of the false dawn, although their bases, extending to the abyss, were still plunged in darkness. A light mist floated in the air; presently it lifted, and the shores of the Dead Sea became visible. The sun, ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... however, are discernible in his observations on a comet, which appeared in the beginning of his Sophimore year.—Holmes's Life ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... familiar examples, and then make them better by convincing applications; never labouring by hard words, and then by heedless distinctions and sub-distinctions, to amuse his hearers, and get glory to himself; but glory only to God. Which intention, he would often say, was as discernible in a Preacher, "as a natural from an ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton |
