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More "Discern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... philosophy which is not used in almost innumerable shades of meaning, to express ideas more or less widely different from one another. Between two of these ideas a sagacious and penetrating mind will discern, as it were intuitively, an unobvious link of connection, upon which, though perhaps unable to give a logical account of it, he will found a perfectly valid argument, which his critic, not having so keen an insight into the Things, will mistake for a fallacy ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... down her veil. The man returning from the ferry was in sight at the top of the hill. Mr. Withers was alighting from Thane's wagon. She turned her gray mask towards him, through which he could discern the soft outline of her face, the color of her lips and cheeks, the darkness of her eyes; their ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... warnings, and although I know it to be a most dangerous commodity, I have ventured to offer the simple truth, as far as I have been able to discern it, consoling my advisers with the assurance that its insidious influence will be unlikely to do harm, because, however potent may be the direful latitude of other religious novels, this particular book can only interest those wiser ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... own activities. Here and there, individual buildings stimulated poignant memories of the occasion that brought them forth. The sulphur plant assumed an aspect of derision. Beneath the huge dimensions of the head-race he seemed to discern the obliterated canal over which St. Marys came to grief. Was he himself to be brought down by its titanic successor? He stared up the lake, comparing himself with the voyageur who had once floated out of this ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... company being thus checked, overcome with grief, casting their eyes upon the ground, and betraying their bashfulness with blushing, went sadly away. But I, whose sight was dimmed with tears, so that I could not discern what this woman might be, so imperious, and of such authority, was astonished, and, fixing my countenance upon the earth, began to expect with silence what she would do afterward. Then she coming nigher, sat down at my bed's feet, and beholding my countenance sad with mourning, ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... aqua-fortized India-rubber. This first oven was a tantalizing failure. The heat was neither uniform nor controllable. Some of the pieces of India-rubber would come out so perfectly "cured" as to demonstrate the utility of his discovery; but others, prepared in precisely the same manner, as far as he could discern, were spoiled, either by blistering or charring. He was puzzled and distressed beyond description; and no single voice consoled or encouraged him. Out of the first piece of cloth which he succeeded in vulcanizing he had ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... nothing to me as it does to the Roman Church; but it means everything to me, because I believe that every mother should love the God that is in her child, and that every mother's heart should be watching to discern and see in the child, which is more than flesh and blood, something that takes hold of immortality ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... 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 artery in ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... young man, with some toil and trouble, crossed the churchyard, and gained Cheapside, where a yet more terrific scene of devastation than that which he had previously witnessed burst upon him. On the right of London Bridge, which he could discern through the chasms of the houses, and almost to the Tower, were nothing but ruins, while a similar waste lay on the left. Such was the terrible change that had been wrought in the aspect of the ruined ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... something as beautiful as what we see. This valley seemed to have less of the appearance of barrenness or imperfect cultivation than any of the same character we had passed through; indeed, we could not discern any traces of it. It is called Strath Eyer. 'Strath' is generally applied to a broad vale; but this, though ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... that prevents us from feeling this our true evil? It is, as I have said, so ordered by God, that we may not perish on seeing the evils hidden in the depths of our hearts. For God keeps them hidden, and would have us discern them only by faith, when He points them out to us by means of the evil that we feel. Therefore, "In the day of evil be mindful of the good." [Ecclus. 11:26] Behold, how great a good it is, not to know the whole of our evil! Be mindful of this good, and ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... de la Tour; and 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 sea-shore in order to construct those two cottages, of which you can now discern neither the entrance nor the roof. Yet, alas! there still remains 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
... mystery of God's mercy, that turns the night of heathen darkness into day, and makes the desert soul bloom with the flowers of paradise! O cross of the Crucified! Lifted up, it shall draw all men to their Saviour! And O blind and slow of heart to believe! why could we not discern that this young Chinaman's conversion was our Lord's gracious challenge to our faith, and the pledge of success to the Church that will go into all the world with ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... thus managed,—though a person of wrong head, or of outrageous vanity, or of invincible prejudices, must be managed very much as you would manage a lunatic, (being, in fact, removed from perfect sanity upon these points,) still, they must never be allowed to discern that they are being managed, or the charm will fail at once. I confess, for myself, that I am no believer in the efficacy of diplomacy and indirect ways in dealing with one's fellow-creatures. I believe that a manly, candid, straight-forward course is always the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... pale as death, but his face hard as iron, spoke a few low words that he did not catch, and the Brothers standing by the walls at once turned the lamps down so that the room became dim. In the half light he could only just discern their faces and movements. ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... afraid, should we get closer, that we might make some noise and alarm the animals. I therefore made a sign to my companions to stop; and looking down, we could discern one of the dams I have spoken of carried across the stream from one side to the other, and apparently not quite finished. Though several beavers were running about it, they were not at work; indeed, all their operations are carried on during darkness. Nature, of course, has given them the instinct ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... mysterious warbler was not a warbler at all, but the Carolina chickadee. That was an outcome quite unexpected, although I now remembered that chickadees were in or near the St. Augustine swamp; and what was more to the purpose, I could now discern some relationship between the tee-koi, tee-koo (or, as I now wrote it, see-toi, see-too), and the familiar so-called phoebe whistle of the black-capped titmouse. The Southern bird, I am bound to acknowledge, is ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... stands in no need of it, and is the worse for it. I love to let him step deeper into the mire,'—[luring him on with his own confessions, and with my assumptions of his case] 'and so deep that if it be possible, they may at least discern their error. FOLLY AND ABSURDITY ARE NOT TO BE CURED BY BARE ADMONITION. What Cyrus answered him who importuned him to harangue his army upon the point of battle, "that men do not become valiant and warlike on a sudden, by a fine oration, no more ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... has been fulfilled; that half-century has passed by, and the great republic goes on its career of greatness, and no eye can discern the ultimate ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... moment, moreover, the light grew 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
... 'Now a dust blows. Something approaches. Now I discern horses, now a vehicle; and it is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... heat of the combat was over the first thought that struck Charles was to look for Henry. They were separated in the confusion of the fight. She ran through the men, but could not find her. Here and there she could discern in the pale light of a clouded moon some knot of soldiers binding up their wounds and recounting their escapes and their triumphs. She hurriedly ran through them, enquiring for her brother-officer, but none knew anything of her. She scanned every feature, she called her in every group, but ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... [74] narrow dell, A fair smooth pathway you discern, A length of green and open road— As if it from a fountain flowed— Winding away between the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... ruled and when his rule was o'er, Ye still were constant to the royal line. Now that his two sons perished in one day, Brother by brother murderously slain, By right of kinship to the Princes dead, I claim and hold the throne and sovereignty. Yet 'tis no easy matter to discern The temper of a man, his mind and will, Till he be proved by exercise of power; And in my case, if one who reigns supreme Swerve from the highest policy, tongue-tied By fear of consequence, that man I hold, ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... for suffering and impels to noble acts, which moulds life and takes the sting and the terror out of death? Nor is that the only encouragement given to the twelve, who might well be appalled at the prospect of standing before Gentile kings. Jesus seems to discern how they shrank as they listened, at the thought of having to bear 'testimony' before exalted personages, and, with beautiful adaptation to their weakness, He interjects a great promise, which, for the first time, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... crossing the bridge at Hampton, they stopped on the river bank, at the point arranged, near the palace. Half an hour passed, and then footsteps were heard, and two figures approached. Not a word was spoken until they were near enough to discern their faces. ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... another creek on the left, one mile beyond which we encamped on the southern shore under high projecting cliffs. The French had reported that lead ore was to be found in this place, but on examining the hills, we could discern no appearance of that mineral. Along the river on the south, is a low land covered with rushes, and high nettles, and near the mouths of the creeks, supplied with oak, ash, and walnut timber. On the north the ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... I know to the contrary, (in the dark as I am about the Protestant Dissenting tenets,) might be of use to the health of their souls. But what security our Constitution, in Church or State, could derive from that event, I cannot possibly discern. Depend upon it, it is as true as Nature is true, that, if you force them out of the religion of habit, education, or opinion, it is not to yours they will ever go. Shaken in their minds, they will go to that where the dogmas are fewest,—where they are the most uncertain,—where ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the glad summons was heard, 'Land in sight!' and was seated upon a sofa, with the child in her lap. The captain very politely handed his glass to the ladies who stood near him, and directed them how to catch a glimpse of the shore, which they were just able to discern. When they had all had a peep, he turned to the young lady whom I have mentioned, and asked if she would like to look. She thanked him, and rose for the purpose, first cautiously laying her sleeping baby upon the sofa. She then advanced ...
— Georgie's Present • Miss Brightwell
... deliberation 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
... a man of what is immediately before her. Now this sensibility to the present, is the main quality on which the capacity for practice, as distinguished from theory, depends. To discover general principles, belongs to the speculative faculty: to discern and discriminate the particular cases in which they are and are not applicable, constitutes practical talent: and for this, women as they now are have a peculiar aptitude. I admit that there can be no good practice without principles, ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... the afternoon? How goes it with those who have just received a new sense, or found a sudden doubling of that which they had before? Nay, it was a new sense, a new power of perception, able to discern what had eluded all their previous lives. The brook in the meadow had been to Diana's vision until now merely running water; whence had come those delicious amber hues where it rolled over the stones, and the deep olive shadows where the water was deeper? She had never seen them ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... puzzled glance around the room, but could discern no familiar face among the gay groups at the many little tables. David, however, gave an exclamation, and ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... staring at the creatures. Spread out to full dimensions, each one made a sphere about four feet in diameter. In the center, a solid mass whose outlines were difficult to discern; and spreading out from this a hundred long, thin, many-jointed arms or legs or branches or whatever one could ...
— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson
... happiness in our strolling. She had also found health and strength, and, marvellous to say, there had come to her a slight improvement in vision. She had always been able to distinguish sunlight from darkness, but with renewed strength had come the power dimly to discern dark objects in a strong light, and even that small change for the better had brought unspeakable gladness to her heart. She said she owed it all to me. A faint pink had spread itself in her cheeks and a plumpness had been imparted to her form which gave to her ethereal beauty a touch of the material. ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... Severinus, the popular saint of the country, to solicit his approbation and blessing. The lowness of the door would not admit the lofty stature of Odoacer: he was obliged to stoop; but in that humble attitude the saint could discern the symptoms of his future greatness; and addressing him in a prophetic tone, "Pursue" (said he) "your design; proceed to Italy; you will soon cast away this coarse garment of skins; and your wealth will be adequate to the liberality of your mind." ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... mentioned in the Biblical records, they present some features which are not related in the New Testament. Clairaudience, that is the hearing of a spirit voice, is common to both, but the direct voice, that is the hearing of a voice which all can discern with their material ears, is a well-authenticated phenomenon now which is more rarely mentioned of old. So, too, Spirit-photography, where the camera records what the human eye cannot see, is necessarily a new testimony. Nothing is evidence to those ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 be very agreeable, ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... this kind: the cannibalism of Central African tribes, and the killing of parents, as a religious duty, in Sumatra.[61] To reply "custom" is to beg the whole question, for customs do not exist without reason, however difficult it may be to discern the reason for any particular custom. To reply that these things are mysteries, as the old theologians did when the doctrine of the Trinity was questioned, is to leave the question unanswered and to challenge doubt and investigation. The human mind ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... God! I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself; That in my striving I may soar as high As I can now discern with this clear eye. That my weak hand may equal my firm faith, And my life practise more than my tongue saith. That my low conduct may not show, Nor my relenting lines, That I thy purpose did not know Or ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... inquiry is made of you as to my whereabouts, please let it be known, of course without specifying the exact spot, that I have gone to the land of the Eskimo. My face will soon be overgrown with a beard which I shall so dye that the keenest scented mob in all the world can not discern any difference between my humble self and the anatomy of the regulation Eskimo. ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... abruptly broken, if the zeal, or policy, of Mourzoufle had not refused to sacrifice the Greek church to the safety of the state. [77] Amidst the invectives of his foreign and domestic enemies, we may discern, that he was not unworthy of the character which he had assumed, of the public champion: the second siege of Constantinople was far more laborious than the first; the treasury was replenished, and discipline was restored, by a severe inquisition into the abuses of the former reign; and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... a landscape of Jealousy, Presents itself unto thine eye. A Kingfisher, a Swan, an Hern, Two fighting-cocks you may discern, Two roaring Bulls each other hie, To assault concerning venery. Symbols are these; I say no more, Conceive the rest ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... with all the ardour I am capable of, to those I have brought into the world, and those dear to them. Thus are my fervent and frequent prayers directed,—that you may die the death of the righteous, and to this end, that Almighty God would endue you all with spiritual wisdom, to discern what ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... dwarf pier and one or two small white houses. By now it was time for dinner, and having dined in a saloon that was hung with jade-green silk, we leaned over the bulwarks and contemplated the remote scene before us. We could just discern by the pier some small tramp steamer reposing. In the little white houses one or two lights twinkled, and presently, not far off, we distinguished a mouse-colored something, the upper outlines of which resolved themselves into high ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... which chained St. Simeon Stylites to his pillar, and sustains the Hindoo fakirs in their apparently superhuman vigils. These children of Nature had probed with direct simplicity some of the deep secrets which men of science often fail to discern through tortuous devices. I was assured that this trance was merely the result of a concentrative energy of the will, which riveted the faculties upon a single purpose or idea, and held every nerve and sense in absolute abeyance. We are so little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and gone, and there is not much beyond the decencies of ordinary sentiment to be got from him. I can see that he has given up any idea that the Rector can be alive, and that, so far as he can be, he is truly sorry. I can also discern that even in a more emotional person than Mr. Lucas, Uncle Henry was not likely to inspire ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... that immense living silence generated by forty men at their prayers. At the further end there shone out faintly the glory of the High Altar, almost luminous, it seemed, in the light of the single red spark that hung before it. Frank could discern presently the gilded figures that stood among the candlesticks behind, the throne and crucifix, the mysterious veiling curtains of the Tabernacle.... Finally, in the midst of the choir, stood a tall erection which he could ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... stop abruptly where our microscopes cease to be of use. At this point the vision of the mind authoritatively supplements that of the eye. By an intellectual necessity I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that "matter" which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestrial life.' Without halting for a moment I go on to do the precise thing ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... weeping of all the women of the world. It lessened again, she seemed to be passing away from it, she heard it far beneath her, it grew tiny in its volume—tiny as if it were an infinite speck or point of sound which she could still discern for millions and millions of miles, till at length distance and vastness overcame it, and it ceased. It ceased, this song of the earth, but a new song began, the song of the rushing worlds. Far away she could hear it, that ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... needful to pierce the thick skins of men, to correct their lethargic stupidity, to rouse them out of their drowsy negligence, then may they well be applied when plain declarations will not enlighten people to discern the truth and weight of things, and blunt arguments will not penetrate to convince or persuade them to their duty, then doth reason freely resign its place to wit, allowing it to undertake its work ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... nearer to our own day. The argument is not closed, although we can discern offers of concession from either side. Svend Grundtvig, editor of the enormous collection of Danish ballads, distinguished the ballad from all forms of artistic literature, and would have the artist left ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... then, he lifted my mother from off the stone, and together we three walked home. Lettie lingered, the shadow with her. Was that the young girl? I could not quite discern." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... knew the house next door was vacant. Even in the darkness, he could discern the real estate agent's sign in the front window. Hence his surprise in beholding a man pressing the doorbell of the empty house—for that, he discerned, was what the ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... nation would not have continued to entrust its destinies to the men who misguided it consistently and perseveringly for so many years, to the watchmen who saw nothing of the rocks and sandbanks ahead which it was their function to discern and their duty to avoid, and who are now unwittingly but effectually deluding the people into believing that the present campaign, which is but a single episode in a long-spun-out contest, is an ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... said Gangler, "whence comes the wind, which is so strong that it moves the ocean and fans fire to flame, yet, strong though it be, no mortal eye can discern it? wonderfully, therefore, must ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... them a man in a dream; one who was intensely sad, but who gave no suggestion of panic, no solicitude about his own fate, no doubt of his ultimate victory. Their practical astuteness was disarmed by that higher astuteness attained only by peculiar minds which can discern through some sure interior test the rare moment when it is the part of wisdom not to ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... much difficulty he was able to discern the imprint of a moccasined-foot where it had pressed a small mound of sand. He straightened himself up and ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... distance up one of the rivers, there was a large rock which was held in great veneration by the Indians, and was often consulted by them, as to their own, or their nations' destinies; all of which they imagine they are able to discern, in some rude figures or paintings, with which it ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... sensible that I must, like others, reach that term, it is yet at so great a distance, that I cannot discern it, because I know I shall not die except by mere dissolution, having already, by my regular course of life, shut up all the other avenues of death, and thereby prevented the humours of my body from making any other war upon me, than that which I must expect from the ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... three at once; meanwhile the rest Stand fearfully, bending the eye and nose To ground, and what the foremost does, that do. The others, gathering round her if she stops, Simple and quiet, nor the cause discern; So saw I moving to advance the first Who of that fortunate crew were at the head, Of modest mien, and graceful in their gait. (Carey's translation of Dante's ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... day was cold and damp. A fog, so thick that one could not discern objects ten steps off, hung over the earth. Sauvresy, after breakfast, took his gun and ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... all people well discern The bottles he had slung; A bottle swinging at each side, As hath ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... Fos-te-di-na's first child, a boy, was born, the happy parents named him William, which is only another word for Gild Helm. Out from this northern region, and into all the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands, the custom spread. In one way or another, one can discern, in the headdresses or costumes of the Dutch and Flemish women, the relics ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... why we should persevere longer in withholding our recognition of the independence and sovereignty of Hayti and Liberia, I am unable to discern it. Unwilling, however, to inaugurate a novel policy in regard to them without the approbation of Congress, I submit for your consideration the expediency of an appropriation for maintaining a charge d'affaires near each of those new States. It does not admit of doubt that ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... young art thou in this old age of time! How green in this gray world? Canst thou discern The signs of seasons, yet perceive no hint Of change in that stage-scene in which thou art 35 Not a spectator but an actor? or Art thou a puppet moved by [enginery]? The day that dawns in fire will die in storms, Even though the noon be calm. My ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... overcome, by shaping their policy according to the facts that confront them. The factors which will determine whether any or all of these undesirable results will ensue are many. They cannot be balanced in the abstract. Yet general reasoning enables us to discern those which will make that likelihood greater or smaller in any ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... nicety of the work. Suppose the graduated scale to be thirty feet in circumference. Divided into 360 deg., each would be one inch long. Divide each degree into 60', each one is 1/60 of an inch long. It takes good eyesight to discern it. But each minute must be [Page 62] divided into 60", and these must not only be noted, but even tenths and hundredths of seconds must be discerned. Of course they are not seen by the naked eye; some mechanical contrivance must be ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... people who will not hear anything about occult science, because they think they discern something unhealthy in what has just been said. These people are quite right as regards the surface and outer aspect of life. They do not desire that to be stunted, which life, in its so-called reality, offers. They see ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... formed in New England and for which that 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 ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... 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 made ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... if any there present had been before of an opinion contrary, he might doubtless have departed thence a convert in that point, and have confessed that then both Commonwealth and Religion will at length, if ever, flourish, in Christendom, when either they who govern discern between Civil and Religious, or they only who so discern shall be admitted to govern." In other words, Milton's hopes of a favourable hearing for his doctrine in Richard's Parliament were founded (1) on ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... queries, 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 underlying much ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... breezy gallop of ten miles in the early morning, and as they came up the trail Tony could distinguish his mother, already on the watch, waving a welcome as far as her eyes could discern them. Outside the settlement the boys slackened speed, and talked regretfully of their coming separation. North Eagle was wearing an extremely handsome buckskin shirt, fringed and richly beaded. He began unfastening it. "I give you my shirt," he ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... their burden, went to and fro over the wretched road from Belle Plain to Fredericksburg. A credible witness says that for several days nearly all the bandages and a large proportion of the hospital supplies came from its treasury. No mind can discern and no tongue can declare what valuable lives it saved and what sufferings it alleviated. Who shall say that Christian charity has not its triumphs proud as were ever won on battle-field? If the Commission could boast only of its first twenty-four hours at Antietam ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... avenue, but ever dusky and utterly silent. Deeper moss couched here; unfallen moondrops glistened; mistletoe palely sprouted from the gnarled boughs. Nor could I discern, though I searched close enough, elder or ash tree or bitter rue. We journeyed softly on till I lost all count of time, lost, too, all guidance; for as a flower falls had ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... sort of voice they really possess, whether soprano, mezzo or contralto. Of course, it is easy enough to distinguish between the extremes of these, between a "real" tenor and a low bass, but the difference between a high baritone and tenor is rather more difficult to discern, and a young man studying has often been at great disadvantage by imagining, for instance, that he had a tenor voice and trying constantly to sing music too high for him, since he in reality had ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... "practical politics," how these principles could find their expression and realisation. It is interesting, however, to know, and to have it authoritatively from his own pen, that Watts at least could not discern either the time or the application of these ethical principles to the affairs of the great world; for in 1901 there appeared from his hand a quasi-philosophical defence of the South African War, entitled "Our Race ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... her discourse before me, reading from her type-written manuscript in a clear voice, in which I could scarcely discern a tremor. Then we went through the dumb show of exhibiting the uxen eggs to a frantically applauding audience; she responded to countless supposititious encores, I leading her out repeatedly before the green curtain to face the great, damp, ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... I do? How should I act? Ah! yes, at that moment I sat utterly bewildered, and trying in vain to discern some way out ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... may pride yourself on the magic that renders you invisible, but my arrow shall find you out. Thus do I fix a shaft That shall discern between an impious demon And a good Brahman; bearing death to thee, To him deliverance—even as the swan Distinguishes the milk from ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... upon the election of the moment. No man, therefore, could venture to lay down as a rule, Do what makes you happy; use this as your test of actions, satisfied that in that case always you will do the thing which is right. For he cannot discern independently what will make him happy; and he must decide on the spot. The use of the nexus between morality and happiness must therefore be inverted; it is not practical or prospective, but simply retrospective; and in that form it says no more than the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Countess, is less the work of love than a persevering vanity. I defy you to find a mistake in the true motives behind your insistence. Nature has given woman a wonderful instinct; it enables her to discern without mistake whatever grows out of a passion in one who is a stranger to her. Always indulgent toward the effects produced by a love we have inspired, we will pardon you many imprudences, many transports; how can I enumerate them all? All ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... amusement, censure or sympathy. When the curtain rises I am once more on my own side of the Mendon hills; the walls of that first world enclose and protect me. Here I again recover my first sense of nature and the existence of other beings; here I discern the inward foreshadowings of what was to attract and mould ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... "couleur locale" which predominates in the spot where his plot is laid; but because the eye of the critic has become familiar with such unworthy productions as these, it must scan with more eager justice any pages which are a happy exception to this miserable reality; it must not hesitate to discern whether the motive has been merely to arouse emotional tendencies, by clothing life's dangerous forms in unreal fascinations, or (where the author's hand, guided by his unsullied heart, has taken up the quill ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... lay on them. We did not talk much, but kept quiet and listened. It was an inky-black night, and occasionally rainy. We were among woods and rocks, hills and gorges—so shut in, in fact, that when we peeped through a chink in a curtain, we could discern nothing. The driver and conductor on top were still, too, or only spoke at long intervals, in low tones, as is the way of men in the midst of invisible dangers. We listened to rain-drops pattering on the roof; and the grinding of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... in the osier-plaited cage, And ivy-garlands glaucous with the dew: Man's wealth, man's servitude, but not himself! And so they pale, for lack of warmth they wane, Freeze to the marble of their images, And, pinnacled on man's subserviency, Through the thick sacrificial haze discern Unheeding lives and loves, as some cold peak Through icy mists may enviously descry Warm vales unzoned to the all-fruitful sun. So they along an immortality Of endless-envistaed homage strain their gaze, If haply some rash votary, ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... Tarlenheim suddenly, before I could discern his purpose or stay him, uncovered his head and bent as he used to do, and kissed my hand; and as I snatched it away, ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... olden books 'tis written, That he that would discern The secret'st truth of things Lost paradise eterne. He was the first that fed On fruit that knowledge brings; Exiled from joys, he fled And flaming swords did burn Behind his path, which ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... scaffold (God avert the prophecy of the last, Venient Romani) surely may convince the world, that they both dyed true Assertors of the Reformation. And the great and learned light of this last age, Grotius, soon discern'd this inclination in him: for in his dedication of his immortal and scarce ever to be parallel'd book, De Jure Belli & Pacis, he recommends it to Lewis XIII, King of France, as the most Royall and Christian ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... scouts coming from both armies met each other, and after an exchange of blows they each retired to their own camp, and in this way it became evident to us that the enemy were not far away. As we proceeded from there it was impossible to discern the ships. For high rocks extending well into the sea cause mariners to make a great circuit, and there is a projecting headland,[54] inside of which lies the town of Hermes. Belisarius therefore commanded Archelaus, the prefect, and Calonymus, the admiral, not to put in ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... the converse of that insight which could discern goodness under a ragged cassock, or in a swearing postilion. And, having discerned the true nature of such Great Men, Fielding proceeds to point out that "However the Glare of Riches and Awe of Title may terrify the Vulgar; nay however Hypocrisy may deceive the ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... exercise of skill, but a means of pouring out the inmost feelings of the soul. Sappho (fl. 600 B.C.) the other leader of the Aeolic school of poetry, was the object of the admiration of all antiquity. She was contemporary with Alcaeus, and in her verses to him we plainly discern the feeling of unimpeached honor proper to a free-born and well-educated maiden. Alcaeus testifies that the attractions and loveliness of Sappho did not derogate from her moral worth when he calls her "violet-crowned, pure, sweetly smiling Sappho." This testimony is, indeed, opposed to the accounts ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... as related I discern no grievous sin, but only folly and a youth's wild fancies. The Franks will call thee sinful and a liar; but they, I think, have never known the youth which we experience—the warmth, the wonder and the dreams of it. The lad who has been taught to read, or fed ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... however. There was no sign of life that we could discern, save a few gaudily plumaged birds that flitted hither and thither, sometimes sweeping right over the boat, as though curious to ascertain what new thing this was that invaded their solitude; and presently the craft that had been our home for ten days—which seemed more ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... Skips lightly on, like a roebuck bounding. Familiar waters surround the prow Where happy Fridthjof is standing now. He rubs his eyes and his hand he places Above his brow to discern the traces Of home so dear; but he looks in vain,— Of Framness ashes alone remain. The naked chimney stands lone and dreary, Like warriors' bones of their grave-mounds weary; The garden place is a blackened floor, The ashes whirl round the wasted ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... Cury" will amply remunerate a study. It presents the earliest mention, so far as I can discern, of olive oil, cloves, mace, and gourds. In the receipts for making Aigredouce and Bardolf, sugar, that indispensable feature in the cuisine, makes its appearance; but it does so, I should add, in such a way ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... along the wall, was an oblong table which was bare. Above it, against the wall, was a shelf on which Frank could discern three or four big home-made loaves ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... has so educated and regulated her intellect, her tastes, her emotions and her moral sense, as to be able to discern the true from the false, will be ready for the faithful performance of whatever work in life is allotted to her; while she who is allowed to grow up ignorant, idle, vain, frivolous, will find herself fitted for no state of existence, and, in ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... and soul made an offering for my sins. For whereas, before, I lay continually trembling at the mouth of hell, now, methought, I was got so far therefrom that I could not, when I looked back, scarce discern it. And oh! thought I, that I were fourscore years old now, that I might die quickly, that my soul ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... years, at last appreciated for its true worth. Alas for the irony of fate! Under Darwin's interpretation the very "defects" which had rendered Sprengel's work a failure now became the absolute witness of a deeper truth which Sprengel had failed to discern. One more short step and he had reached the goal. But this last step was reserved for the later seer. He took the fatal double problem of Sprengel—as shown at E and F, to express the consummation pictorially—and by the simple drawing of a line, as it were, as indicated between ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... Charles V., Christina of Pisan, protested in the name of insulted women: "To you who have beautiful daughters, and desire well to introduce them to honest life, give to them, give the Romaunt of the Rose, to learn how to discern good from evil; what do I say, but evil from good! And of what utility, nor what does it profit listeners to hear such horrible things?" The author "never had acquaintance nor association with an honourable or virtuous woman"; he has known none ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... before visited this part of the country, and yet she felt akin to the landscape. Not so very far to the left of her she could discern a dark patch in the scenery, which inquiry confirmed her in supposing to be trees marking the environs of Kingsbere—in the church of which parish the bones of her ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... with a furtive glance at Philip's camp, had been hostilely considering the discouraging effect of Aunt Agatha's presence upon the rival camper. That Aunt Agatha would presently discern degenerative traces of criminality in his face by reason of his reprehensible proximity to her niece's camp, Diane did not doubt. That the aggrieved lady would call upon him within a day or so and air her rigid notions of propriety and ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... crumbled, was it not because of its own weakness? Was not the fact of its decay the sign of some secret disintegration, of rottenness at the core? And if the new spirit could destroy, perhaps it could build as well. There might be more in it, he was beginning to discern, than mere lack of control, than vulgar hysteria and undisciplined violence. The quality expressed by that dreadful word was the sparkle on the edge of the tempest, the lightning flash that revealed the presence of electricity in the ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... forgetting that the truth which he possesses is equally the right and inheritance of every man he meets, takes up a peculiar dress or phraseology, as symbols of his fancied difference from his human brothers. All great poets, till Shelley and Byron, as far as we can discern, have been men especially free from eccentricities; careful not merely of the chivalries and the respectabilities, but also of the courtesies and the petty conventionalities, of the age in which they lived; altogether well-bred men of the world. The answer, that they learnt the ways of courts, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Akers too she began to discern an inclination not to pull out until after the election. He was ambitious, and again and again he urged that he would be more useful for the purpose in her mind if he were ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... which one among the assemblage was to be the subject of the ceremony. But nobody appeared there who was at all out of the region of commonplace. The people were all quiet and settled; yet he could discern on their faces something more than attention, though it was less than excitement: perhaps it was expectation. And as if to bear out his surmise he heard at that moment the noise of ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... thou, ere thou hear, discern If I speak folly? but a king, Whether a thing be great or small, Like Allah, hears and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... all other assumptions than that of His true and eternal Oneness are as false in themselves as they are derogatory to the rational views of deity, we all now see and believe; but the direct proofs of this are more strictly matters of revelation than of reason: albeit reason too can discern their probabilities. Wise heathens, such as Socrates and Cicero, who had not our light, arrived nevertheless at some of this perception; and thus, through conscience and intelligence, became a law unto themselves: because that, to them, as now to any one ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... them to guard the secret, a singular sagacity made them discern all the snares laid for them, a rare prudence suggested to them a thousand responses, not one of which betrayed their secret; and when at length the time came when it was their duty to make it known to the common Father of the Faithful, they wrote correctly, ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... waste paper to them, and they prized instead a cheap contemporary literature. But when the several nations of Europe had acquired distinct tho rude written languages of their own, sufficient for the purposes of their rising literatures, then first learning revived, and scholars were enabled to discern from that remoteness the treasures of antiquity. What the Roman and Grecian multitude could not hear, after the lapse of ages a few scholars read, and a few scholars ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... dread, Still trail their curse from race to race, And furtively abroad they spread. To nonsense, reason's self they turn; Beneficence becomes a pest; Woe unto thee, that thou'rt a grandson born! As for the law born with us, unexpressed;— That law, alas, none careth to discern. ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... eyes would not allow her to discern objects through the open door of that apartment within which the heart of Thaddeus had undergone such variety of misery. Forming an irresistible wish to know whether the deceased were any relation of Constantine, she paused a moment ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... other light. She felt the need of protecting herself against thoughts which had never until now given her a moment's uneasiness. Happily she was going to lunch with her friend Mrs. Borisoff, anything but a sentimental person. She began to discern a possibility of taking Helen Borisoff into her confidence. With someone she must talk freely; Olga would only harm her; in Helen she might find the tonic of sound ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... was at this time floating in an atmosphere of rationalistic negation, and the moral of his piece, as he hints, points first to the extravagance of Catholicism, next to the vanity of the pleasures of the world, and lastly, to the unfathomable uncertainty of philosophy. Still, we may discern a significant leaning towards the theory of the eternity of matter, which has arranged itself and assumed variety of form by virtue of its inherent quality ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... of the drama only buffoonery, or a digestive for his dinner, why not be able to discern good buffoonery from bad, and the pure ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... Duchess towards her step-daughter was not far from positive hatred. She seemed to seek occasions to mortify her, and to manufacture quarrels which it would have been no trouble to avoid. It was some time before Maude could discern the cause. But one day, in a quiet talk with Bertram Lyngern, still her chief friend, she asked him whether he had ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... in her glance akin to that of the squirrel. When she heard on the road the rattle of wheels, and caught the flash of revolving spokes in the sun, she had a sensation of relief. There was not a house in sight, except far to the left, where she could just discern the slant of a barn roof through the trees. Everything was very still. While there was no wind, it was cool in the shade, though hot in the sunlight. She pulled her jacket over her shoulders. She leaned against a tree and remained perfectly quiet. She had on a muslin ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... no idea of where I was. There was no snowstorm going on at the time, but a recent snowfall was being driven along by a merciless northern gale. As soon as I stood erect on my seat, my head reached into a less dense drift layer, and I could clearly discern a farmhouse not more than a few hundred yards away. I had been on the point of accepting it as a fact that I was lost. Those tactics would not have done on this particular day, there being the snowstorm to reckon with. For the moment, not being lost, I was ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... was skeptical on the subject, dwelling especially upon the impossibility of any person swallowing a reptile unawares. "Observe those water-cresses of which you have been partaking so freely, madam," said the microscopic man. "Beneath each leaf I discern ova of things that it might horrify you to enumerate in full. Suffice it to say, then, for the present, that on the leaves of this small sprig culled by me at random from the cluster, are to be detected the germs of the trigonocephalus contortrix, than which, when fully developed, no more ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... of her good qualities, because she possessed them too naturally; and she remained poor in the midst of all the riches which she was unable to discern. ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... 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
... can be called houses—but they were deserted. Desolation preceded their way, for they were on the track of Harold the Victor. At length, they passed the cold Conovium, now Caer-hen, lying low near the river. There were still (not as we now scarcely discern them, after centuries of havoc,) the mighty ruins of the Romans,—vast shattered walls, a tower half demolished, visible remnants of gigantic baths, and, proudly rising near the present ferry of Tal-y-Cafn, the fortress, almost unmutilated, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... out of his mouth when from the earth arose a form that seemed at least ten feet high. It was clothed in white, and from its head projected two monstrous horns, which were pointed towards us in a threatening manner. I could discern no features, but a huge mass of white bones were visible where the face should have been, and I thought that I could hear them rattle as the beast, devil, or ghost shook its head in an ominous manner, and ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... were broken; but the chief point of contrast with the desolate front was made by a Virginia creeper, which grew luxuriantly up to the eaves, hiding every sign of decay save those dim, dusty apertures which seemed to deny all possibility of life within. And yet, on looking steadily, did he not discern something at one of the windows on the top story—something like a curtain or a blind? And had not that same window the appearance of having been more recently cleaned than the others? He could not ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... also I can recognize a sufficient, effectual man, whom one must wish well to, and prophesy well of. The sound of him is nowise poetic-rhythmic; it is clear, one-toned, you might say metallic, yet distinct, significant, not without melody. In his face, above all, I discern that "indignation" which, if it do not make "verses," makes useful way in the world. The higher such a man rises, the better pleased I shall be. And so here, looking over the water, let me repeat once more what I believe is already dimly the sentiment of all Englishmen, Cisoceanic ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... come with you,' said the fox, lowering his eyes, lest the cocks should discern the hungry look in them. 'And if there are a thousand mice in the loft, they shall all soon lick the dust. Ah! you don't ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... nothing as regards the character of the scene; and I should have said nothing about them.' He proceeded to remark that many who could descant with eloquence on Nature cared little for her, and that many more who truly loved her had yet no eye to discern her—which he regarded as a sort of 'spiritual discernment.' He continued, 'Indeed I have hardly ever known any one but myself who had a true eye for Nature, one that thoroughly understood her meanings and her teachings—except' (here he interrupted himself) 'one ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... was easier for them to discern me than for me to do the same by them, for besides the dismay of meeting so many faces at once, the whole room was filled with the smoke of tobacco, a thing which was strange to me, and which caused my eyes to tingle, besides tempting me to cough. I ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... Matter. Trace the line of life backwards and see it approaching more and more to what we call the purely physical condition."[B] And then, rising to the height of his subject, or even above it, he proclaims, "By an intellectual necessity I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that Matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestrial life."[C] A little further on, speaking in the name of science, ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... lid, and, starting up, looked about her, to see what had befallen Epimetheus. The thunder-cloud had so darkened the room that she could not very clearly discern what was in it. But she heard a disagreeable buzzing, as if a great many huge flies, or gigantic mosquitoes, or those insects which we call dor-bugs and pinching-dogs, were darting about. And, as her eyes grew more accustomed ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... to sit, sit, sit, with Little Dorrit on my mind, and the Christmas business too—though that is now happily dismissed. On Monday afternoon, and all day on Wednesday, I am going to sit again. And the crowning feature is, that I do not discern the slightest resemblance, either in his portrait or his brother's! They both peg away at me at the same time." The sittings were varied by a special entertainment, when Scheffer received some sixty people in his "long atelier"—"including ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... us the knowledge necessary for such discerning, so difficult and yet so requisite, since we have not even any certain and demonstrative marks by which to discern infallibly between true and false miracles, or to distinguish the works of the Almighty from the illusions ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... common beaten Road, repeating for the main what others have in the same homely manner done before them: It hath been my task to denote some new Faculty or Science, that others have not yet discovered; this the Reader will quickly discern by those new Terms of Art which he shall meet withal throughout this whole Volume. Some things I have inserted of Carving and Sewing that I might demonstrate the whole Art. In the contrivance of these my labours, I have so managed them for the general good, that those whose Purses ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... Nuremberg?" Reinhold threw his arm around Frederick and looked kindly into his eyes. Whereupon Frederick said, "The more I look at you, honest friend, the stronger I feel drawn towards you; I clearly discern within my breast the wonderful voice which faithfully echoes the cry that you are a sympathetic spirit I must tell you all—not that a poor fellow like me has any important secrets to confide to you, but simply because there is room in the heart of the true friend for his friend's ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... that in that innate ennoblement which implies no superiority either of the intellect or of the heart, but merely a greater refinement of the nervous tissue, the Cornish have displayed, from the earliest period we can discern, a slight superiority over us English. Drake, a man of this district if not a Cornish-man, when sailing on his daring buccaneering adventures, dined and supped to the music of violins, a refinement which even his ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... rained heavily during the early part of the day. The glasses were up, and so bespattered with the mud and rain, that it was impossible to see through them. Sir Henry let them down; saw a confused mass of carriages; and could clearly discern a ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... he called it—and 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; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... by your leave, I know it was I by my apples in my sleeve, And speaketh as like me as ever you heard:[203] Such hair, such a cap, such hose and coat, And in everything as just as fourpence to a groat. That if he were here, you should well see, That you could not discern nor know him from me; For think you, that I do not myself know? I am not so foolish a knave, I trow. Let who woll look him by and by, And he woll depose upon a book that he is I; And I dare well say you woll say the same; For he called himself by my own name. And he told me all that I have ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... 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
... step from the lights and brilliancy of the tavern to the darkness of Williamsburg's single avenue. There were no street lanterns, and only a moon by which to see. He could discern the dim bulk of William and Mary College and of the Governor's Palace, but except near at hand the smaller buildings were lost in the dusk. A breeze touched with salt, as if from the sea, was blowing, and its touch was ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... my lord," Sir Giles returned, gravely. "I discern nothing comic in the matter; though much ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... you see a Fancy preserv'd a la Mummy, several Thousand Years old; by examining which you may perfectly discern, how Nature makes a Poet: Another you have taken from a meer Natural, which discovers the Reasons of Nature's Negative in the Case of humane Understanding; what Deprivation of Parts She suffers, in the Composition of a Coxcomb; and with what wonderful Art She prepares ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... 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 ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... Yet, if it would be vain to attempt an accurate and exhaustive account of Rabelais' philosophy, the main outlines of that philosophy are nevertheless visible enough. Alike in the giant-hero, Pantagruel, in his father, Gargantua, and in his follower and boon-companion, Panurge, one can discern the spirit of the Renaissance—expansive, humorous, powerful, and, above all else, alive. Rabelais' book is the incarnation of the great reaction of his epoch against the superstitious gloom and the narrow asceticism of the Middle Ages. He proclaims, in his rich re-echoing voice, a ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... agitation, be a dangerous one. If justice be done, all necessity for the extirpation of any part of the people will at once be removed. Baptisms of blood are seen only when humanity has failed in her offices, and the suffering discern hope only in the brute efforts ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... day is not far distant. Methinks I hear the rustling of a new spring-tide of humanity; methinks I discern the morning flush of new world-stirring ideas, and before my mind's eye rises a bridge, over which pass all the nations of the earth, Israel in their midst, holding aloft his ensign with the inscription, "The Lord is my banner!"—the one which he bore ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... it. (2) That this idea, thus determined, i.e. which the mind 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 ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... towards the north, upon the ice, without discovering any island; that it had not been possible for him to proceed any farther, the ice rising there in the sea like mountains; that he had climbed to the top of some of them, whence he was able to see to a great distance round about him, but could discern no appearance of land; and that at last wanting food for his dogs, many of them died, which obliged him ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... taking his rest. Facts, however, are facts; and, having crept softly from Mr. Bennett's side with the feeling that at last everything is all right with him, we are compelled to return three hours later to discover that everything is all wrong. It is so dark in the room that our eyes can at first discern nothing; then, as we grow accustomed to the blackness, we perceive him sitting bolt upright in bed, staring glassily before him, while with the first finger of his right hand he touches apprehensively the tip of ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... ignorance of particular facts affects the rightness not of the [Greek: praxis], but of the [Greek: pragma], but ignorance of i.e. incapacity to discern, Principles, shows the Moral Constitution to have been depraved, i.e. shows Conscience to be perverted, or the sight of ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... springing up out of the irritated pride and the sectarian rancour of the Protestants of Ireland. As yet they have not engaged in the great struggle; they have not closed in the combat; but as they advance upon each other, and collect their might, it is easy to discern the terrible passions by which they are influenced, and the fell determination with which they rush to the encounter. Meanwhile the government stand by, and the minister folds his arms as if he were a mere ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... as a partisan of woman's rights, but as a lover of the human race. In this faint dawn of woman's day, I discern not woman's development of freedom merely, but the promise of that higher, finer, purer civilization which is to redeem the world, the lack of which makes men tyrants and women slaves. You cannot be unconscious of the fact that a new race of women ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Mammy questioned, as, pausing upon the threshold, she peered into the obscurity beyond. The windowless room was dark, and Mammy, after again calling, groped her way in, straining her eyes into the gloom, but unable to discern any object. Then, suddenly, the deep silence and the gloom smote upon her senses, and a great horror came over her. She turned to rush from the room, when her eyes, grown more accustomed to the darkness, fell upon an object which froze the lifeblood in her veins. It lay almost at her feet. She ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... evinced than for rhetorical beauty or range of imagination; occasionally, however, he would diverge from the plain thread of argument, and rise to declamation of striking brilliancy and power. Over-quick, with all his natural phlegm, to discern and to resent personal affronts—oftentimes when there was no occasion therefor—he was a favorable exemplar of that peculiar, and to our mind, somewhat incomprehensible quality, which the Southern people glory in, and which they dignify by the stately epithet of 'chivalry.' On the whole, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... acres in extent, lay at the base of cliff-like rocks topped with a few primeval pines. Everywhere there were barren sheep pastures alternating with acres of stunted fir and hemlock, and in sheltered nooks, adjacent to these coverts, he could discern something which he judged to be stone sheepfolds. Just below him, on the opposite side of the road and the Rothel, which was crossed by a broad bridging of log and plank, stood a long low stone house, to the north of which a double ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... of the brightest blue, the sun of the purest gold, and the air full of vitality, but calm; and there, in that brilliant light, stretched itself far, far out into the infinite, as far as the eye could discern, an ocean-like extent, the waves of which were sunflowers, asters, and gentians, nodding and beckoning in the wind, as if inviting millions of beings to the festival set out on the rich table of the earth. Mrs. H. was an impressible woman with poetic tastes, and a strong admiration ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... and the day glimmered, and standing in the carriage, looking back, he could discern the track by which he had come, and see that there was no traveller within view, on all the heavy expanse. And soon it was broad day, and the sun began to shine on cornfields and vineyards; and solitary ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... every critical doubt which my sceptical ingenuity could suggest, the Darwinian hypothesis remained incomparably more probable than the creation hypothesis. And if we had none of us been able to discern the paramount significance of some of the most patent and notorious of natural facts, until they were, so to speak, thrust under our noses, what force remained in the dilemma—creation or nothing? It was obvious that, hereafter, the probability would be immensely greater that the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... creeds are stationary and conservative, but religious thought can not always be bound nor its progress permanently hindered. Honest Christian men and women will think, and they are now thinking in the terms of a universal Christianity. If I am able to discern the signs of the times, the rising tide of Christian love and fellowship is about to overflow the lines of sect and bring together in one common hope and in one common brotherhood all those who love our ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... the village we were visiting looked possibly a trifle more primitive than those of the non-Eta population outside the oaza, I did not discern anything different from what I saw elsewhere. The people were of the Shinshu sect; there was no Shinto shrine. At the public room I noticed the gymnastic apparatus of the "fire defenders." The hamlet was traditionally 300 years old and one family was still ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... presidential campaign of 1860, between the Chicago convention in the middle of May and the election at the beginning of November, Mr. Lincoln, relieved from all other duties, had watched political developments with very close attention not merely to discern the progress of his own chances, but, doubtless, also, much more seriously to deliberate upon the future in case he should be elected. But it was only when, on the night of November 6, he sat in the telegraph office at Springfield, ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... Darrell; "one word before I move. I know not who you are; and, as I cannot discern your face, I may be doing you an injustice. But there is something in your voice that makes me distrust you. If you attempt to play the traitor, you will do so at the hazard of ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the priest discern the danger, the bane, the alarming rivalry, involved in this priestess of nature whom he makes a show of despising. From the gods of yore she has conceived other gods. Close to the Satan of the Past we see dawning within her a Satan of ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... 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 presence of the other woman. ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... 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 ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... these considerations and approach the historical connection through those still undetermined problems which concern the origin of Masonry, we shall discern not unfortunately a way clear to their solution, but a significant characteristic pervading every Masonic hypothesis almost without exception—namely, an instinctive desire to refer Masonry in its original form to sources that are provably mystic. In the fanciful and extravagant period, ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... discern the figures to which Carmela was pointing. But this strange girl's triumphant tone rang like a knell in her heart. She was not thinking now of the complications that might arise between San Benavides and his discarded flame. She only knew that, by some miracle, her uncle had come to bring ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... great extent of land and ocean is to be seen. The great Tower of the Percys, from which this turret rises, is decorated with the lion of Brabant, and is seated on the brink of a cliff above the town. From this lofty structure the eye, stretching along the coast, may discern the castles of Dunstanbrough and Bamborough: the Fern Islands, dotted upon the face of the waters, the Port of Alemouth, and, at a little distance, the mouth of the river Coquet, with its island and ruined ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... at the Lord Mayor's banquet, Mr. Gladstone said that he was glad to discern signs of improvement in Ireland during the last twelve months; but the struggle between the representatives of law and the representatives of lawlessness had rendered necessary an augmentation of the ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... speech, which Lear called pride, so enraged the old monarch who in his best of times always showed much of spleen and rashness, and in whom the dotage incident to old age had so clouded over his reason, that he could not discern truth from flattery, nor a gay painted speech from words that came from the heart—that in a fury of resentment he retracted the third part of his kingdom, which yet remained, and which he had reserved for Cordelia, and gave it away from her, sharing it equally between ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... abide three days, he is a false prophet. And when he departs, let not the apostle receive anything save bread until he find shelter; but if he ask money, he is a false prophet. And any prophet speaking in the Spirit ye shall not try, neither discern; for every sin shall be forgiven, but this sin shall not be forgiven. Yet not every one that speaketh in the Spirit is a prophet, but only if he have the ways of the Lord. From his ways, therefore, the false prophet and the [true] prophet shall ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... their silence, at such a moment, was impressive to a degree. Florence remained impassive under Don Luis Perenna's gaze; and he was unable to discern on her sealed face any of the feelings with which ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... post, you careless fool!" commanded Roger, but the old man, beckoning mysteriously, led him out and across the dark yard to a pent beside the gate, and there in the deep shadow he could just discern the figure of a man—a very short man, but erect and somehow formidable ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... To discern the plan of history, and the causes or laws through which it is accomplished, as far as our limited capacity will allow, is the object of what is ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the wives of the artist-tribe, and perhaps with most wives: not being exactly what he wished her to be, and lacking the faculties to become so, she tried to seem it. The desire was partly sincere, partly an affectation, as we discern in such little trifles as her suddenly using the word "thou" in a letter to Hookham where she had previously been using the ordinary colloquial "you." That she was not quite ingenuous we also detect ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... communion, his confidence being won by the plain tale of who I was and what I had endured. The Lord indeed was pleased, throughout that period of fears and tribulation, marvellously to endow the persecuted with a singular and sympathetic instinct, whereby they were enabled at once to discern their friends; for the dangers and difficulties, to which we were subject in our intercourse, afforded no time for those testimonies and experiences that in ordinary occasions are required to open the hearts of ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... verses and omitted in others does not seem clear. Rhythmical considerations do not sufficiently account for it. Something other than style seems to have influenced its use; but what that something may have been it is difficult to discern. Nor does the principle seem clearer in the Aramaic ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... have laboured for the overthrow of their national superstition and the elevation of Christianity in its stead. The precepts of the latter, when offered to the natives apart from the divinity of their origin, present something in appearance so nearly akin to their own tenets that they were slow to discern the superiority. If Christianity requires purity and truth, temperance, honesty and benevolence, these are already discovered to be enjoined with at least equal impressiveness in the precepts of Buddha. The Scripture commandment forbidding murder is supposed to be analogous to the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... water-craft fussed and fumed and dodged around the transports,—tugs, rowboats, launches and clumsy river steamers strung with flags and black with civilians. One tug that hung close by shone with more color than the others by reason of the women crowding it; Tom could discern the face of his mother looking, looking with yearning eyes that would have called him back. He drew a quick breath of surprise and his hands tightened on the black rigging. There on the tug, standing beside his mother instead of among those who were saying good-bye to the ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... they were seeking repose in the bosom of their parent ocean. It soon became almost calm; a light western breeze barely swelled our sails, and gently wafted us to the land, which we could faintly discern to the north-east. Our ship had been so shaken in the tempest, and was so leaky, that captain Thomas thought it prudent to make for the first ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... offered him, but he did not sit long; he soon stood up again, and did not reseat himself. Little by little he began to look around him and discern the other guests. Seeing Gania, he smiled venomously and muttered to ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... seaward forts above us we could discern no signs of activity, and only a light here and there, far out on the misty expanse of waters, showed the position of the Japanese war-vessels, which had an easy job of it as far as Port Arthur was concerned. The weather, though so ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... less than human. The form of her earthly presence had been trained to a fashionable perfection; her nature had not been left unaided in its reversion toward the vague animal type from which it was developed: in the curve of her thin lips as they prepared to smile, one could discern the veiled snarl and bite. Her eyes were grey, her eyebrows dark; her complexion was a clear fair, her nose perfect, except for a sharp pinch at the end of the bone; her nostrils were thin but motionless; her chin was defective, and her throat as slender as her horrible waist; ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... swinging in unison to the rhythm came four men in a large Indian canoe, speeding with the current down the centre of Indian creek. Peering from their concealment, Kendrick and the detective could discern the blacker outlines of the craft and its occupants as it sped forth from the gloom of the forest into the starlit area of the tiny lake. The great canoe was low in the water; for heaped in the centre ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... therefore, in nearly every myth of importance, and certainly in every one of those which I shall speak to-night, you have to discern these three structural parts,—the root and the two branches: the root, in physical existence, sun, or sky, or cloud, or sea; then the personal incarnation of that, becoming a trusted and companionable deity, with whom you may walk hand in hand, as ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... sentences from the Book of Jonah, it is plainly seen that the Deity has not failed to take notice of the animals: "And should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?" Again, in the Psalms, "Every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... my face, and the wet waves of space assail my eyes. Patiently I pick out of the earthy pallor which blends all things some foggy shoulders, some cloudy angles of elbows, some hand-like lacerations. I discern in the still circle which encloses me—faces lying on the ground and dirty as feet, faces held out to the rain like vases, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... always gay in this sense: that, although it may be afflicted and oppressed by its own misfortunes and those of others, it refuses in the darkest moment to consent to despondency; and thus a habit of mind is formed which can discern in most of its own afflictions some cause for grave rejoicing, and can thence infer at least a probability of such cause in cases where it cannot be discerned. Regarding thus cheerfully and hopefully its own sorrows, it is not overtroubled by those ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... fool, she turned to me, and, with as much affability as possible (for she is no great mistress of affability), said, 'Don't be uneasy, dear Molly, for you are come to the house of a friend—of one who hath sense enough to discern the author of all the mischief: depend upon it, child, I will, ere long, make some people ashamed of their folly.' This kind reception gave me some comfort, my aunt assuring me that she would convince him how unjustly he had accused me of having made any complaints to her. A paper war was ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... the interposed dark lunar body is reduced to comparative insignificance, or even invisibility. Maclaurin tells us[159] that during an eclipse of this character which he observed at Edinburgh in 1737, "gentlemen by no means shortsighted declared themselves unable to discern the moon upon the sun without the aid of a smoked glass;" and Baily (who, however, was shortsighted) could distinguish, in 1836, with the naked eye, no trace of "the globe of purple velvet" which the telescope revealed as projected upon the face of the ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... wind whistled through the vale with the dreariness of November. When Caesar reached the graveyard, he uncovered his grizzled head with superstitious awe, and threw around him many a fearful glance, in momentary expectation of seeing something superhuman. There was sufficient light to discern a being of earthly mold stealing from among the graves, apparently with a design to enter the highway. It is in vain that philosophy and reason contend with early impressions, and poor Caesar was even without the support of either of these ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... and the three-sided windows did indeed allow an extraordinarily clear view of the interior. The girls had always believed themselves out of range of vision when they were seated at the table; but at this moment Nan could distinctly discern four anxious faces scanning the opposite house, catch Agatha's craning movements, and Lilias's waving hands. The sight provoked an irresistible chuckle of amusement, and Mr Vanburgh's eyes turned ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... was not, however, till we had, for a mile and more, ridden through lawns and fields covered with grain and fruit, laid out in divisions of tillage or of wood, that, emerging from a dark grove, we came within sight of the palace. We could just discern, by the glittering of the sun upon the jewelry of their horses, that the last of the company were wheeling into the grounds in front of what seemed the principal part of the vast structure. That we might not be too much in the rear of all, we put our horses to their speed, which then, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... to accelerate the coming of this future? Not very much, it is true, but we can surely do something. We can not create geniuses, often we can not discern them, but having discerned, surely we can use them to the best advantage. It is true that all scientific research has depended and will depend upon individuals; Simon Newcomb ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... From either side of this abyss, smaller ravines of similar character diverged, the distance between which seldom exceeded half-a-mile. Down them trickled small rills of water, derived from the range on which we were. We could not, however, discern which way the water in the main valley ran, as the bottom was concealed by a thicket ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... would worship the Yozis, he would make them men. And the baboons arose from worshipping, smoother about the face and a little shorter in the arms, and went away and hid their bodies in clothing, and afterwards galloped away from the rocky shore and went and herded with men. And men could not discern what they were, for their bodies were bodies of men, though their souls were still the souls of beasts and their worship went to the Yozis, ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... If he had been less weak at that moment he would have turned away; as it was, he leaned against the high, white wall with an intolerable sense of discomfort and fatigue. When the porter came and looked out, it took him several minutes to discern, through the gathering darkness, the worn figure in waiting ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... blazoned o'er; 90 Above the plumes, upon his helmet's cone, Castile's imperial crest illustrious shone; Blue in the wind the escutcheoned mantle flowed, O'er the chained mail, which tinkled as he rode. The barred vizor raised, you might discern His clime-changed countenance,[209] though pale, yet stern, And resolute as death,—whilst in his eye Sat proud Assurance, Fame, and Victory. Lautaro, now in manhood's rising pride, Rode, with a lance, attendant at his side, 100 In Spanish mantle gracefully arrayed; Upon his ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... 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 that the Opposition are ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... for only a minute, for when I looked down again, the landscape below was beginning to look like a dim map or a picture, instead of the reality. The doctor was steering to the northward, directly over the lake. I could see its great purple, restful surface below me, but more plainly could I discern the outline where its silvery edge bathed the white sands of the shore. Following this outline I could see a web of railroads, like ropes bent around the lower end of the lake. The night was too dark to see it long. The hundreds ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... These are the true geographers and unboasting Nimrods. You who have ever seen the strange sight of the spearing under the flame of immense torches in the rapids of the Buisson, where no straining of your own eyes could ever discern the trace of a fish; and you with whom it was an article of faith that certain death waited in every channel, swirl and white horse of the thundering Lachine Rapids, until one day some one speculated how the market boats of the lake above could turn up ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... pupils, and was in particular intimate and 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 ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... some of the queer ridges I had so often stepped over, and some of the rivers I had leapt. The rivers were there wide enough in places, but nothing in the way of a ridge or any signs of those inky patches could I discern. Careful examination showed, however, that here and there the smooth shore was covered with sand of a rather reddish hue, quite unworthy of remark in daylight. The foolishness of my apprehensions seems apparent, but nevertheless I urge everyone to ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... purposely mingled with those of Katherine Vermilia, wife of Peter Martyr, and on the grave where the two were interred was carved the inscription, "Here lieth Religion with Superstition." Of course the object of this was to prevent any further worship of the relics, as it would be impossible to discern the bones of the saint from those of the heretic. It is not improbable that both were good women according to their light; but the saint was assuredly far the less enlightened. To common sense, apart from tradition and sentiment, it is difficult ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... who were not at all hearty in its favour. On the fourth day of December, a motion was made for the bill, by colonel George Townshend, eldest son of lord viscount Townshend, a gentleman of courage, sense, and probity; endued with penetration to discern, and honesty to pursue, the real interest of his country, in defiance of power, in contempt of private advantages. Leave being given to bring in a bill for the better ordering of the militia forces in the several counties ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... and found that the captain had come to tell me of our arrival. The fog had held off and we had done much better than the captain's prediction. Hurrying into my clothes, I went on deck, from which, through the slight haze that hung over the water, I could discern the lights of a ship, and beyond, dimly visible, the old familiar line of Post buildings showing against the dark spruce-covered hills behind, where the ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... up in a sheepskin warm from the body of the sheep, being then not three years old. David Copperfield's memory goes beyond this. He represents himself seeing so far back into the blank of his infancy as to discern therein his mother and her servant, dwarfed to his sight by stooping down or kneeling on the floor, and himself going unsteadily from the one to the other. He admits this may be fancy, though he believes the power of observation in numbers ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... with the dregs of his smile yet curving his lips, scanned it without too much appearance of interest. He was known for a "collector," a man who gathered things that others disregarded, and both Miss Pilgrim and Selby watched him with the respect of the laity for the initiate. But they could not discern or share the mounting ecstasy of the connoisseur, of the spirit which is to the artist what the wife is to the husband, as he realized the truth and power of the coloring, its stained-glass glow, the justice and strength of the patterning and the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... I fear I am unjust to the Railway Company, for there was light enough for me to see, and in some measure scrutinize, the face of my fellow-passenger. I could discern a strong chin, and good, useful jaws; with a firm-lipped mouth, and a nose more remarkable for quantity than disposition of mass, being rather low, and very thick. It was surmounted by two brilliant, kindly, black eyes. I lay in wait for his forehead, as if I had been ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... feet in height; the 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 further he withdrew from them, the more like a human face, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • 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, ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... and began to step down the ladder. She stood for a moment to watch, leaving the trap open for better light. Between the avenue of casks and bins I stumbled toward the door and lantern that were just to be discern'd at the far end of the cellar. As I struck steel on flint, I heard the trap close: and since then have never set eyes on ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... Turning now to consider figures of speech, we may equally discern the same general law of effect. Underlying all the rules given for the choice and right use of them, we shall find the same fundamental requirement—economy of attention. It is indeed chiefly because they so well subserve this requirement, that figures of speech are employed. To bring the mind ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... weaknesses of temper and mind, the king had intellect enough to know what were the great interests of his kingdom and power, and on whose shoulders they rested. Above all the littleness of a court cabal he could not but discern the great questions which impended, and with which he felt quite incompetent to deal. And he could perceive but one man in his kingdom able to handle these ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... powerful instruments that science can put into our hands, and by their aid we will again essay to make another stride towards the appreciation of our subject. In what, to the unaided eye, was unbroken darkness, the telescope now enables us to discern a number of luminous points of haze, and towards one of these we continue our journey. The myriads of suns in our great star cluster are soon being left far behind; they shrink together, resolve themselves into haze, until the once glorious universe of countless millions of suns has dwindled ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... next few months Mr. Lee surveyed the field about him, endeavoring to discern what could be accomplished with no other capital save brains. A decision was soon reached, and it resulted from one of those little incidents of life, which, although rare indeed, make life all the more worth living. I hope ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... course, you cannot discern the peril. It is but natural that you should treat all well-meant advice lightly. Probably I should, mon cher ami, if I ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... worldly wealth? I confess that, after passing through a period of sneering incredulity, I have come during my life here to recognize the value of the rites of religion and of religious observances in the family, and to discern the importance of household customs and domestic festivals. The family will always be the basis of human society. Law and authority are first felt there; there, at any rate, the habit of obedience should be learned. Viewed in the light of all their consequences, the spirit ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... when it was beginning to get dark we went on to the cliff. The wind was blowing so hard we could scarcely stand. We met Fred Swain, who said that the two boats were coming round the point from the east. By straining our eyes we could just dimly discern one boat. Hagan now joined us and we stood for some time watching it. It was making for Big Beach, so he and Graham ran off to Little Beach to get pieces of wood for its landing. By the time we got down to the beach it was in and the crew were pulling it up. ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... hand over the Puritans; who, though their pretensions were not so immediately dangerous to her authority, seemed to be actuated by a more unreasonable obstinacy, and to retain claims, of which, both in civil and ecclesiastical matters, it was as yet difficult to discern the full scope and intention. Some secret attempts of that sect to establish a separate congregation and discipline, had been carefully repressed in the beginning of this reign;[*] and when any of the established clergy discovered a tendency to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... artist in the highest sense of the word, since he must aid in chiselling a glorious statue from the living block intrusted to his care,—is it not essentially necessary that every human being should be taught to discern and love the beautiful? And vast is the difference between the artist in the school of men and in the school of God; the first, working for and in time, must be satisfied with leaving to his fellow men some brilliant yet perishing records of his thoughts; while the latter, working for eternity, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Devonshire with his white rod, Lord Grey with the Sword of State, and the Chancellor with his seals, came in procession. Then all the Royal Dukes with their trains borne behind them, and last the King leaning on two Bishops. I do not, I dare say, give you the precise order. In fact, it was impossible to discern any order. The whole abbey was one blaze of gorgeous dresses, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... blood ... Than to the throne] Part of this emendation I have received, but cannot discern why the head is not as much native to the heart, as the blood, that is, natural and congenial to it, born with it, and co-operating with it. The relation is likewise by this reading ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... good reason exists why we should persevere longer in withholding our recognition of the independence and sovereignty of Hayti and Liberia, I am unable to discern it. Unwilling, however, to inaugurate a novel policy in regard to them without the approbation of Congress, I submit for your consideration the expediency of an appropriation for maintaining a charge d'affaires near each of those new States. It ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that seemed to be impending over her. The same moment in which my mind seemed to have arrived at the possibility of such a resolution, I rose almost involuntarily, and glancing once more at the dull light in her window—for I did not doubt that it was her window, though it was much too dark to discern, the shape of the house—almost felt my way to the stair, and climbed again ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... talk is kindly; any fool can point out flaws, said Goethe (who certainly had a great mind, whatever his heart was like),—it takes a clever man to discern excellencies. A good talker makes other people feel they are much cleverer than they had before realized; they are at their best, thanks to the listener who draws out the best side of them. It is delightful to be with some people—you are sure of ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... every part of the province. Near Guayavita, brown iron-ore has been discovered. To the north of Turmero, a granitic summit (the Chuao) rises in the Cordillera of the coast, from the top of which we discern at once the sea and the lake of Valencia. Crossing this rocky ridge, which runs towards the west farther than the eye can reach, paths somewhat difficult lead to the rich plantations of cacao on the coast, to Choroni, Turiamo, and Ocumare, noted ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... hominem minorem mundum, in quo mixtum ex elementis corpus et spiritus coelestis et plantarum anima vegetalis et brutorum sensus et ratio et angelica mens et Dei similitudo conspicitur:—"It is a commonplace of the schools that man is a little world, in which we may discern a body mingled of earthy elements, and ethereal breath, and the vegetable life of plants, and the senses of the lower animals, and reason, and the intelligence of angels, and a likeness ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... morning sun from her light nut-brown hair that hung in a cluster of curls about her oval face. Her complexion was of a delicacy that he could compare only with a rose petal. He could not at that distance discern the colour of her eyes, but he guessed them blue, as he admired the sparkle of them under the ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... synthetic unit, or group, is apprehended as a simple experience. When the rhythm function is thoroughly established, when the structural form is well integrated or familiar, it becomes well-nigh impossible to return to the analytic attitude and discern the actual temporal and intensive relations which enter into the rhythm. Even the quality of the organic units may lapse from distinct consciousness, and only a feeling of the form of the whole sequence remain. ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... dark-haired, so the detective says. She had a curious fixed look in her eyes which attracted him, but she wore a thick motor veil, so that he could not clearly discern ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... face brightened, but, stealing a glance at Cecil's, which only expressed consternation, it was speedily overcast, and he returned an evasive answer. Looking gloomily for the relief he expected to discern in her countenance, he received a swift glance of gratitude, which uncomplimentary graciousness completed ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... a grateful memory. While this pulse shall beat, and while this heart shall throb, the names of Barzello and Joram will, by me, be fondly cherished. Then there was much opposition from certain quarters. There were those who could not discern the propriety of my being elevated to an equality with those of greater wealth; and I am not sure, since the king has not seen fit to retrace his steps, but that he has lost the confidence of those concerned. Cousins! I am ever grateful to those kind friends ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... at his brother as if for information, but without results. Lucy's pinched, tear-stained face added to his restlessness, and there was a note of insincerity in Uncle Gilbert's reassuring talk that his brother did not fail to discern. ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... show surprise is to declare ignorance—and the British and Dutch South Africans, after the manner of all superlatively ignorant races, have the profoundest contempt for those in whom they themselves can discern ignorance. Thus when the kindly eminence of a hill gives you a ten-mile view of some tiny townlet—a view conveying no inkling of the importance of the centre which you are about to approach—it is well to be silent. For the Colonial is surely more imaginative ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... and there seemed to be signs of another rain coming up. No other place of shelter was in the immediate neighborhood that he could discern. ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... rendered the air around intensely cold. Continuing our route down into the valley, still accompanied by the lively, chattering stream, now widening into a roaring river, we have a great mountain range on either side, and pass through a lofty narrow gorge. Looking back, I could scarcely discern the cleft in the rocky barrier through which we ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... lustre passing light. On every seam there was a lace Drawn by the unctuous snail's slow pace, To which the finest, purest, silver thread Compared, did look like dull pale lead. His breeches of the Fleece was wrought, Which from Colchos Jason brought: Spun into so fine a yarn No mortal wight might it discern, Weaved by Arachne on her loom, Just before she had her doom. A rich Mantle he did wear, Made of tinsel gossamer. Beflowered over with a few Diamond stars of morning dew: Dyed crimson in a maiden's blush, Lined with humble-bees' ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... take several short swallows without gulping anything down; while, strangely enough, something seemed to get in his eyes, for a moment preventing him from seeing anything seaward but assort of hazy mist as he stood listlessly by the head of the pier, trying vainly to discern the excursion-boat, now ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... drove out of Nice and up the hill to Villefranche, I turned over the whole of the queer facts in my mind, but could discern no motive for Pierrette's secret journey South. Why was she, so young, a nun? Why had she left her convent, if not at the instigation ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... the hair and whiskers grizzled by his sufferings during his travels, and this gave a hard look to his face. The skin which had once been so delicate had been tanned to the copper-red color of Europeans from India; but in spite of his absurd pretensions to youth, you could still discern traces of the Imperial Highness' charming private secretary in du Chatelet's general appearance. He put up his eyeglass and stared at his rival's nankeen trousers, at his boots, at his waistcoat, at the blue coat made by the Angouleme tailor, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... a sultan, and with magnanimous patience and condescension put up with her adoration. I must own, I glared indignantly at his red face, on which, under the affectation of scornful indifference, one could discern vanity soothed and satisfied. Akulina was so sweet at that instant; her whole soul was confidingly and passionately laid bare before him, full of longing and caressing tenderness, while he... he dropped the corn-flowers on the grass, pulled out of the side pocket of ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... the common mind, and so thoroughly engrossing are the cares of common life, that only the few among men can discern through the glitter and dazzle of present prosperity the dark outlines of approaching disasters, even though they may have come up to our very gates, and are already within striking distance. The yawning seam and corroded bolt conceal their defects ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... father, at this hour. He was alive and well, and nothing ever came of it, but I saw him in the daylight, sitting with his back towards me, on a seat that stood beside my bed. His head was resting on his hand, and whether he was slumbering or grieving, I could not discern. Amazed to see him there, I sat up, moved my position, leaned out of bed, and watched him. As he did not move, I spoke to him more than once. As he did not move then, I became alarmed and laid my hand upon his shoulder, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Perhaps he happened to possess eyes that were able to see in such semi-darkness; then again it might be his absence from the fire had much to do with his ability to discern obstacles in time to avoid contact ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... rather than occupy itself rendering it to the dead, who indeed, in contradistinction from the living, have no need of it. The study of history, the rectification of stories of the past, ought to serve another and practical end; that is, train the men who govern nations to discern more clearly than may be possible from their own environment the truth underlying the legends. As I have already said, passions, interests, present historic personages in a thousand forms when they are alive, transfiguring ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... and consummation of ethics.—Religion gathers up into their unity the scattered fragments of duty and virtue which it has been the aim of our ethical studies to discern apart. Religion presents as the will of the all-wise, all-loving Father, those duties and virtues which ethics presents as the conditions of our own self-realization. Religion is the perfect circle of which ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... not correct enough to discern what real friendship was; he loved only those who afforded him amusement, and despised all others. The Duchess was very agreeable and had some pleasant notions; she was fond of eating, which was the very thing for the Dauphin, ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... 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
... looked for 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 ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... Shepherd hears, A cry as of a dog or fox; He halts—and searches with his eyes Among the scattered rocks: And now at distance can discern 5 A stirring in a brake of fern; And instantly a dog is seen, Glancing ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... the decrees of Divine Providence, but after the issue, since mortals are not able to discern the future, whether it be good or whether it ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... story of the photograph. He showed the picture to the woman, and she almost fainted, so intense was her agitation. Jack observed her agitation, and there came a look of triumph in his face. He could discern, as he believed, that after all he had ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey
... elegantly, I remember its being reckoned, &c."—Gram., p. 70. Murray and others omit this "perhaps," and while they allow both forms to be good, decidedly prefer the latter; but neither Priestley, nor any of the rest, ever pretended to discern in these a difference of signification, or even of parts of speech. For my part, in stead of approving either of these readings about the "great exploit," I have rejected both, for reasons which have already been given; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... for what seemed to him several hours, the vegetation grew thinner, the jungle less dense, and from a more or less open space in it he seemed to discern what might have been a mountain entirely submerged in a multitude of heavy grey clouds. He sat down on the green stuff which was like grass and yet was not grass, at the edge of the open space whence he got this view, and quite naturally he picked from the boughs of an overhanging ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... of the candidate for Oliver's premium, whose villainous countenance was a regular stamped receipt for cruelty. But the magistrate was half blind and half childish, so he couldn't reasonably be expected to discern what other people did. ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... Looking down, I could discern several balls of smoke, which I immediately recognised as shrapnel shells, or "Archibalds," that had been fired at us by the Germans. They were well below. I looked round at the Captain. He was smiling through his goggles, and humorously jerked his thumb in the direction ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... and Mary, who came to her husband's side, could plainly discern the buckeye tree and the two graves where "Willie and Willie's father" had long been sleeping. The next morning before the sun was up, Mary stood by the mounds where often in years gone by Sally Furbush had seen the moon go down, and the stars grow ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... which she sometimes heard, during night time, the shrieks of persons being murdered; and she searchingly looked into the remote angles, the dark corners, black with humidity and filth, fearing to discern there Lantier's ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... spread out thin, and the cement was carefully spread over them in a uniform layer. The mass was then turned three or four times until the eye could detect no difference in color; that is, each grain large enough for the eye to discern seemed to be coated with cement. After this dry mixing, water was added in a fine spray—not a deluge from a pail—but only enough to moisten the mixture. The mass was then turned three or four times. The mixture was then shoveled into the mold, no special face mixture being used, so as to about ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... difficult for the manager as to know what news is: the instinct for it is a sort of sixth sense. To discern out of the mass of materials collected not only what is most likely to interest the public, but what phase and aspect of it will attract most attention, and the relative importance of it; to tell the day before or at midnight ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... him that it had come from Castleton, and Castleton had been dining with a high official of the War Office. The particular act of cowardice which had brought the three white feathers to Ramelton was easy to discern. Almost the next day Feversham had told Durrance in the Row that he had resigned his commission, and Durrance knew that he had not resigned it when the telegram came. That telegram could have brought only ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... and Thing, though often enough near it; but the Thing discerning, as it usually did in time, that the King was stronger in men, seemed to say unanimously to itself, "We have lost, then; baptize us, we must burn our old gods and conform." One new feature we do slightly discern: here and there a touch of theological argument on the heathen side. At one wild Thing, far up in the Dovrefjeld, of a very heathen temper, there was much of that; not to be quenched by King Olaf at the moment; so that it had to be adjourned till the morrow, and again till ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... before 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 ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... had a poem in the press, and various surmises to stimulate curiosity were circulated concerning it: I do not say that these were by his orders, or under his directions, but on one occasion I did fancy that I could discern a touch of his own hand in a paragraph in the Morning Post, in which he was mentioned as having returned from an excursion into the interior of Africa; and when I alluded to it, my suspicion was confirmed by ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... to her visions and revelations,—not so, however as to her goodness and her good desires, for herein I have had great experience of her truthfulness, her obedience, mortification, patience, and charity towards her persecutors, and of her other virtues, which any one who will converse with her will discern; and this is what may be regarded as a more certain proof of her real love of God than these visions and revelations. I do not, however, undervalue her visions, revelations, and ecstasies; on the contrary, ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... high dike, beginning on a shoulder of the peninsula above the town, but extending barely a mile across a marsh where the river had once continuously raveled the shore even in dry seasons. The friar was glad to discern a number of figures at work carting earth to the most exposed and sunken spots of ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... beginnings of a common will, a common emotion, and a common consciousness. Of the Great Society, consciously or unconsciously, we must all perforce be members; but of the Great State, the great World-Commonwealth, we do not yet discern the rudiments. The economic organisation of the world has outstripped the development of its citizenship and government: the economic man, with his farsighted vision and scientific control of the resources of the world, must sit by and ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... first dialogue. Now, my private conviction is, that both I and Philebus shall be cudgelled; I am satisfied that such will be the issue of the business. And my reason for thinking so is this,—that I already see enough to discern a character of boldness and determination in Mr. Ricardo's doctrines which needs no help from sneaking equivocations, and this with me is a high presumption that he is in the right. In whatever rough way his theories are tossed ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... 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 ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... Readers will readily discern, too, that The Dynasts is intended simply for mental performance, and not for the stage. Some critics have averred that to declare a drama[3] as being not for the stage is to make an announcement whose subject and predicate cancel each other. The question seems to be an unimportant ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... our inquiries after his health, he replied that he had a slow fever, which made him take all possible care not to inflame his blood. I admitted his prudence, but in his particular instance could not very clearly discern the need of it. Pump water will not heat him much; and, to speak a little in his own style, more inebriating fluids are to him, I fancy, not very attainable. He brought us news, the truth of which, however, I do not vouch ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... sound the 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 Dog, ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... unpeopled as it is now populous. Procida is about three-fourths of an hour's fair rowing from Miniseolae, on the Baian side; but you may run your boat over on a fine day in half an hour. As you approach the houses, you discern the not unpicturesque frontage of a little fishing town; but all is as revolting within as fair without. Something of the Greek or Albanese costume is still preserved here, and they offer to dress up one of their families in full parure for our further satisfaction, if we will pay them. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... she held in her hands her babe, and yet it was God! That picture means nothing to me as it does to the Roman Church; but it means everything to me, because I believe that every mother should love the God that is in her child, and that every mother's heart should be watching to discern and see in the child, which is more than flesh and blood, something that takes hold ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... we are nearer to it. From here we can discern the beautiful forest which surrounds its base as you ascend, the pines growing farther and farther apart, and gradually disappearing altogether. Higher still may be seen the glaciers glittering in the sun; and, last of all, the ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... blessings bestowed upon them. What nation in Europe possesses a future at all, much less such a future as that which lies before us? Russia may improve and prosper to a certain extent; beyond that, no human eye can discern the glimmerings of a higher and more enlarged civilization. England has reached her culminating point. The States of Germany—what future have they? Alas! the past and the present must answer. France—where is her future? Another revolution—another emperor—another and another bloody history ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... archaeological precision is not preserved, and that the Ionic continuators introduced, for example, the military gear of their own period into a poem which represents much older weapons and equipments.] This theory does not help us. In an uncritical age poets could not discern that their genre of romance and religion was alien from that ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... little to his literary dignity. The earlier Shakspeare began to compose for the theatre, the less are we enabled to consider the immaturity and imperfection of a work a proof of its spuriousness in opposition to historical evidence, if only we can discern in it prominent features of his mind. Several of the works rejected as spurious, may still have been produced in the period betwixt Titus Andronicus, and the earliest ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... and ample, and the officers' quarters all that could be desired; her galley equipment was complete, even to a small auxiliary ice plant. What she needed was cleaning, painting and scraping, and lots of it, also the riggers would be a few days on her standing rigging; but, so far as Matt could discern, that was all. From the watchman he learned that one Terence Reardon had been her chief engineer in the days when the Oriental Steamship ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... as though I were in darkness; but now I began dimly to discern the objects about me. I found that I was lying on a settee in a state-room at the stern of the vessel. Through the small round window over my head the first rays of the rising sun darted and soon ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... philosophical historian, nor a mere technical critic; he was for ever dominated by an intense personal fervour. He cared little for the manner of saying a thing, so long as the heart spoke out frankly and freely; he strove to discern the energy of the soul in all men; he could forgive everything except meanness, cowardice, egotism and conceit; there was no fault of a generous and impulsive nature that he could ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... with the Parthians did not materialize. Phrataces heard that Gaius was in Syria, equipped with consular powers, and was furthermore uneasy about home interests in which even previously he had failed to discern a friendly feeling; hence he hastened to effect a reconciliation, secured on the proviso that he himself should depart from Armenia and ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... Church by the schismatics who had departed from its communion; and it was confessed on all sides that the most scandalous licentiousness of manners prevailed among great numbers of those who affected the name of Christians. A Pagan magistrate, who possessed neither leisure nor abilities to discern the almost imperceptible line which divides the orthodox faith from heretical depravity, might easily have imagined that their mutual animosity had extorted the discovery of their common guilt" ("Decline and Fall," Gibbon, vol. ii., ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... is bare of all but the necessary curtains. Indeed, lack of draperies testifies also to his horror of dust. There faces you besides a double door; when it is opened another door is seen. When that is opened you discover a writing table, and beyond can discern a book-case filled with heavy volumes—law reports perhaps. The little room beyond is, so to speak, an under-study. Between the two rooms a window, again barely curtained, throws light down the staircase. But in the big room, ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... a large writing-desk of walnut-tree wood, curiously carved, above which arose shelves of the same, which supported a few books and papers. The opposite side of the recess contained (as far as I could discern, for it lay in shadow, and I could at any rate have seen it but imperfectly from the place where I was seated) one or two guns, together with swords, pistols, and other arms a collection which, in a poor cottage, and in a ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... candidate for Oliver's premium, whose villainous countenance was a regular stamped receipt for cruelty. But the magistrate was half blind and half childish, so he couldn't reasonably be expected to discern what other ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... According to Mr. Pond,(5) the native name of the Dacotah medicine-men, "Wakan," signifies "men supernaturally gifted". Medicine-men are believed to be "wakanised" by mystic intercourse with supernatural beings. The business of the wakanised man is to discern future events, to lead and direct parties on the war-trail, "to raise the storm or calm the tempest, to converse with the lightning or thunder as with familiar friends".(6) The wakanised man, like ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... drawing up the curtain of a theatre. I never remember to have seen anything so striking as this sudden revealing of the fair world at our feet, bathed in glowing sunlight. We beheld the plains of Roumania far away stretched as a map beneath us; there, though one cannot discern it, the swift Aluta joins the Danube opposite Nicopolis; and there, within range of the glass, are the white mosques of Widdin in Bulgaria. We looked right down into Little Wallachia, where woods, rocks, and streams are tumbled about pellmell in a picturesque ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... only served to intensify the fear of colored worshippers whose meetings had been previously broken up by armed mobs. These dusky worshippers, devout as they were, had not the faith sufficient to enable them to discern the smiling face of God through the clouds which hung over them. Demoralized, dejected, disconsolate, they dodged about here and there like sheep having no shepherd. Just as the bell in the tall steeple of the old Baptist Church on Market street was making its last long and measured peals there ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... him, a shabby buggy, but a strongly built one. The team of horses was going at a good clip. James stood on one side, but the team and buggy had no sooner passed than he heard a whoa! and a man's face peered around the buggy wing, not at James, but at his medicine-case. James could just discern the face, bearded and shadowy in the gathering gloom. Then a voice came. It shouted, one word, the expressive patois of the countryside, that word which may be at once a question and a salute, may express almost any emotion. ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... death-bed, after it had languished and shrunk and dwindled and flickered and kept on dying through a tedious two hundred years, when its sole remaining heir was just in one obscure court, from that very court we discern the birth of another empire, as dazzling in its rise, as energetic and impetuous in its deeds as that of Togrul, Alp, and Malek, and far more wide-spreading, far more powerful, far more lasting than the Seljukian. This is the empire of the great (if I must measure it by a human standard) and glorious ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... to cloud, and the 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 ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... of influence between them, his much more receptive nature took a far deeper impression than it made. [1] At the time of their meeting he had already for some three years been acquainted with Wordsworth's works as a poet, and it speaks highly for his discrimination that he was able to discern the great powers of his future friend, even in work so immature in many respects as the Descriptive Sketches. It was during the last year of his residence at Cambridge that he first met with these poems, of which he says in the ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... of thin jungle, Umkopo stopped and half-turning towards me, placed his finger on his lip. 'What is it?' I whispered; 'have you sighted the herd?' Umkopo pointed to a sandy spot at his feet. I could discern a track of sorts, but the footmark of the animal was much blurred in the soft sand; I could see that it was not antelope-spoor, and that was all. Umkopo made a mysterious sign over his forehead. For a moment I wondered what in the world he meant; then it occurred ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... harmonious manner in which the great Catholic conspiracy against the liberties of Europe was unfolded in an ever widening sphere. But to the eyes of contemporaries all was then misty and chaotic, and it required the keen vision of a sage and a prophet to discern the awful shape which the future might assume. Absorbed in the contemplation of these portentous phenomena, it was not unnatural that the Advocate should attach less significance to perturbations nearer home. Devoted as was his life to save the great ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... uncreated charms I burn, Oppressed by slavish fears no more; For One in whom I may discern, E'en when He frowns, a sweetness ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... gentle acclivities end abruptly in the lofty front of the great cliff, called by the French the Rock of St. Louis, looking boldly out from the forests that environ it; and, three miles distant on your right, you discern a gap in the steep bluffs that here bound the valley, marking the mouth of the River Vermilion, called Aramoni by the French. [Footnote: The above is from notes made on the spot. The following is La Salle's description of the locality in the Relation des Decouvertes, written ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... of a little more light tempted him forward to reconnoitre. The lane ended in a terrace with a bartizan wall, which gave an out-look between high houses, as out of an embrasure, into the valley lying dark and formless several hundred feet below. Denis looked down, and could discern a few tree-tops waving and a single speck of brightness where the river ran across a weir. The weather was clearing up, and the sky had lightened, so as to show the outline of the heavier clouds and the dark margin of the hills. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... had them all in a good humour now, I complained I did not see enough of the Waganda—and as every one dressed so remarkably well, I could not discern the big men from the small; could she not issue some order by which they might call on me, as they did not dare do so without instruction, and then I, in turn, would call on them? Hearing this, she introduced me to her prime minister, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... rejoined one of the young ladies engaged in dressing her; "we cannot sacrifice a candle. We don't need them to discern your charms, Em; only to enable us to discover how to deck them to the best ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... the bearers of the light were hardly likely to discern them at so great a distance, he recovered himself and pressed on towards the door and raised the tapestry, when without word of direction Francis passed through, followed by Leoni, and ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... broadside cleared away. She immediately again came to the wind. The ships were still too far apart for the shot to do much damage; they both stood on for some time longer without firing, and were now so greatly increasing their distance from Red Head that the three spectators could but imperfectly discern what took place. Again wreaths of smoke circled above the side of the Champion, and flashes were seen to issue from that of the Coquille, as, imitating the English ship, she put up her helm and kept away across the bows ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... of destiny, his courage and resolution and quick fitting into his country's work, stands easily as the first aggressive American in our literature. In him we see roughly marked what future critics will discern of men more readily assigned a place in universal literature. The Americanism of Hawthorne, for example, differs from that of Webster in quality rather than in essence. They were both content with America and New England. Hawthorne, with his shrug ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... saying of St. Bernard [viz. The Holy Ghost is Christ's vicar on earth (vic-arius), and a saying that I need not to be ashamed of, neither you to be offended at; as my Lord of Durham and my Lord of Chichester by their learning can discern, and will not reckon it ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 187, May 28, 1853 • Various
... he made his way along through yards and gardens, in one of which he thought he could discern two human figures, but he kept on his way, leaping over fences and walls, until after great labor he reached the other end of the town and went toward Crisostomo's house. In the doorway were the ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... down between the sisters, and turned smiling to address first one and then the other, it would have taken a very practised eye to discern under the extra urbanity of his demeanour the intensity of his inward mortification. He talked a great deal and exerted himself to make the sisters talk likewise, bantering Molly into scornful and ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... can be no doubt that among ourselves the simple and direct attitude of the child towards nakedness is so early crushed out of him that intelligent education is necessary in order that he may be enabled to discern what is and what is not obscene. To the plough-boy and the country servant-girl all nakedness, including that of Greek statuary, is alike shameful or lustful. "I have a picture of women like that," said a countryman with a grin, as he pointed to a photograph ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... make her out to be the Pilot's Bride?" was his next query. "I can barely discern a faint spec far away; and that might ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... about to learn! Where is the thread now? Off again! The old trick! Only I discern— Infinite passion and the pain Of finite hearts that ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... as they sometimes were, with other miscellaneous ones to diversify the group, and, for the time being, it made the Custom-House a stirring scene. More frequently, however, on ascending the steps, you would discern—in the entry, if it were summer time, or in their appropriate rooms, if wintry or inclement weather—a row of venerable figures, sitting in old-fashioned chairs, which were tipped on their hind legs back against the wall. Oftentimes they were asleep, but occasionally might be heard ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... coming from the burning earth such waves as seem to be neither black nor white nor substance as thou knowest it? These are waves of heat. So the light taketh its way, and the sound, though the eye of the body may not discern them. The Waves of Being, thy soul's substance, and the waves of light and heat and sound, be but one power made manifest in different degree. And when these unseen waves of melody come to thee from the Temple and strike against thy Soul, ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... everywhere the same—true to the dogmas of his master. What he has learnt, he teaches vehemently; and what he teaches, that he practises himself. There is a spirit of sincerity in all he says; you may easily discern that he is in earnest, and is persuaded of that truth which he inculcates. In this I am of opinion that he excels Horace, who is commonly in jest, and laughs while he instructs; and is equal to Juvenal, ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... next day. Then, clutching up his booty, and forgetting, it may be, that all would be his erelong, or possibly not feeling sufficiently sure of his heirship, he hurried down, with agitated tread, so that even the half-sleeping girl in the room above could discern a ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... never before had an English king married his brother's widow. So striking a coincidence could be only explained by the relation of cause and effect. Men who saw the judgment of God in the sack of Rome, might surely discern in the fatality that attended the children of Henry VIII. a fulfilment of the doom of childlessness pronounced in the Book of the Law against him who should marry his brother's wife. "God," wrote the French ambassador in ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... causes grow, But likewise those, which, by the will of Fate, On each peculiar mode of empire wait; Which in its very constitution lurk, Too sure at last to do its destined work: 570 Let me, forewarn'd, each sign, each symptom learn, That I my people's danger may discern, Ere 'tis too late wish'd health to reassure, And, if it can be found, find out a cure. Let me, (though great, grave brethren of the gown Preach all Faith up, and preach all Reason down, Making those jar whom ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... most of them are still, though rather faintly, classified into groups. While a few of the nearer stand forth by themselves, all of the nearest to our hearts are absolutely individualized, so that our judgments of them are made on the basis of our own motives and what we of ourselves discern. We may use categoric terms concerning our lovers, spouses, or children, but they have no real meaning; these persons are to us purely individual, all trace of the inclusive category has disappeared; they ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... indistinct and slow, Her voice more tremulous and low, When suddenly the song was o'er, A whisper even heard no more— She had discern'd my nearer tread; Appear'd to feel alarm, ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... I could discern what appeared to be the habitations of men on different parts of the lake; but there was not a tree or ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... throes of the labouring woman are less efficacious to bring forth the infant than they would otherwise have been. It is, therefore, much the better way to let the waters break of themselves; after which the midwife may with ease feel the child by that part which first presents, and thereby discern whether it comes right, that is, with the head foremost, for that is the proper and most natural way of the birth. If the head comes right, she will find it big, round, hard and equal; but if it be any other part, she will find it rugged, unequal, soft ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... our first thoughts were about the fire, and we looked eagerly around. It was day, but the sky was as gloomy as ever, and the fire was there before our eyes, bright and terrible. We could now see it plainly, and discern the cause also. The fire came from two points, at some distance apart—two peaks rising above the horizon, from which there burst forth flames and smoke with incessant explosions. All was now manifest. It was no burning ship, no blazing forest, no land inhabited by man: ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... negotiations with Russia, It seems just now more smooth than satisfactory. I fear we have lost credit in India over that unlucky Penjdeh business. One would fancy that our representatives on the spot might have been wary enough to discern that where the Russians and the Affghans were drawing close to each other, there lay the risk and the strain of the situation. I have a very moderate trust in our ally the Amir, though he is a very able, if unscrupulous, ruler. I ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... College, and I spent my time equally between the two places. I became furiously interested in the work, for it has ever been my happy fortune to be intent on whatever I might be doing at the moment. I think I served my uncle well, for I had much of the merchant's aptitude, and the eye to discern far-away profits. He liked my boldness, for I was impatient of the rule-of-thumb ways of some of our fellow-traders. "We are dealing with new lands," I would say, "and there is need of new plans. It pays to think in trading ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... a blue-and-white print frock and white apron so crisp that one could not discern a wrinkle in them, waited on the new guest. She did not ask him what he would have, nor present to him a card from which to select his meal. She brought him first a small cup of chicken broth, steaming hot; and though ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... conferred upon her through the verses of two great poets. She has rather taken it for herself, as Goethe said she was wont to do, in anticipating every gift. It is accordingly not in the Elegiacs of Ovid, flowing as a counter-stream to Lethe, that we may discern Bettina's gesture of immortal repose as a metamorphosed heroine. She is a type of the inspired lyrical nature, a belated child of the Renaissance. A graceful English song-writer of the Elizabethan period, Thomas Campion, who was as fond as Bettina of the figure of the flower and the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... reached London of the gathering of ships and troops at Dunkirk, and of the arrival of the Pretender there. The French admiral at once signalled to all the ships to put about, and he lay off until the English fleet were near enough to discern its composition, which was far superior in force to his own. Seeing the impossibility of landing the troops and stores, and the slight chances of success in giving battle, he hoisted the signal for all to make their way back to Dunkirk, keeping as much as possible together, in order to defend ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... and looked back, but she was too far away for him to discern the expression of her face. He was not possessed of self-esteem enough to believe she had ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... time floating in an atmosphere of rationalistic negation, and the moral of his piece, as he hints, points first to the extravagance of Catholicism, next to the vanity of the pleasures of the world, and lastly, to the unfathomable uncertainty of philosophy. Still, we may discern a significant leaning towards the theory of the eternity of matter, which has arranged itself and assumed variety of form by virtue of its inherent ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... floods, bearing with them the sediment of long and fertile valleys. The blue waters sparkled in the sun under the blue sky; the sea-gulls whirled and screamed through the air; nowhere could the eye discern any of the works of man. It seemed like some secluded corner of the universe, and as if those on ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... presently could clearly discern that the vessels to starboard were large battleships and those to ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... give you no explanation," said the girl. "Now I know that Hamilton Shaw sent you here, I can, I think, discern his motive. I myself will see Mr. Franklyn at once, and shall leave Madrid as soon as possible. And I advise you, Mr. ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... to avoid obeying the command, but at last had gone; and when the Ninevites listened to his preaching and repented and turned to Jehovah he was angry. And Jehovah said unto him, "Should not I have regard for Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand?" (That is, six score thousand ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... began to discern "method in her madness." He changed his cheering tone to one of grave earnestness. "Of whom to you ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... his will! He here recurs to the plan laid down before Decaen sailed to the East Indies in March, 1803. Even the prospects of a continental coalition fail to dispel that gorgeous dream. But amid much that is visionary we may discern this element of practicality: in case the blow against England misses the mark, Napoleon has provided himself with a splendid alternative that will ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Geysers is not pretty; hills rise on one side, but otherwise they lie in a plain, which, when we saw it on our first arrival, was so thickly covered with sand from the storm that we could hardly discern any separate object. We hastened to examine the great Geyser. Alas! it did not, and would not play; it had done so two days previously, and we were told it was expected to renew the exploit, but, to our great mortification, it failed to do so during our visit. One of the peculiarities of ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... my fortunes was held back by enchantment—for we were half a day ascending the stream from Mohacz—we came in sight of a huge cliff almost inaccessible from one side, and a few minutes later could discern the towers of Buda and the mansions of Pesth. While nearing the landing-place and hastening hither and yon to look after various small bundles and boxes, I had occasion to address an Hungarian gentleman. In the course of some conversation which followed I remarked that Pesth seemed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... sensuality. His language and pronunciation were such as we should now expect to hear only from the most ignorant clowns. His oaths, coarse jests, and scurrilous terms of abuse, were uttered with the broadest accent of his province. It was easy to discern, from the first words which he spoke, whether he came from Somersetshire or Yorkshire. He troubled himself little about decorating his abode, and, if he attempted decoration, seldom produced anything ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... events were ever deplored before. The body of protest against unnecessary and unrighteous wars becomes steadily larger, bolder, and more outspoken; the public conscience is more troubled by them; more and more men perceive their wastefulness and wrong, and discern the more excellent way; and to-morrow the total of protesting insight and morality shall be great enough to tip the balance and hold the tempted, ruffling nation to self-restraint, respect for others, and respect for civilization. There was much less war in Christendom during ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... ceased. Gethryn leaned out and gazed down at the lighted windows under his. Suddenly the light went out. He heard someone open the window, and straining his eyes, could just discern the dim outline of a head and shoulders, unmistakably those of a girl. She had perched herself on the windowsill. Presently she began to hum the air, then to sing it softly. Gethryn waited until the ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... 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, did ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thinking hard. Where was that big stone gateway? He strained his eyes in a vain endeavor to discern it ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... intensely good—how often and sometimes oh, how easy for them to be so good. But most of us, even those who educate our faculties of observation the better to earn a living thereby, are very much older than eleven years before we discern this great truth. ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... gardener's wife has her opinion of those holes.—But what are the dangers you discern? All lies quiet beneath the quiet sky. Nothing appears to be threatening my humble ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... exquisite details, as a hard worker, on a holiday morning, might lie still and watch the beam of light travel gradually across his room. But if the new light dazzled, it did not blind him. He could still discern the outline of facts, though his own relation to them had changed. He was no less conscious than before of what was said of Lily Bart, but he could separate the woman he knew from the vulgar estimate of her. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... boat, having been sent from Sydney to Norfolk island, in her passage thither fell in with a considerable shoal bearing from ENE to WNW distant from the vessel one mile. It extended to the northward as far as the eye could discern from the masthead, the rocks in many places appearing above the water. The south end of the shoal is in the latitude of 29 degrees 52 minutes south, and the longitude of 160 degrees 13 minutes east, bearing from Lord Howe Island, which they had seen the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... within this life, Tho' lifted o'er its strife, Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last, "This rage was right i' the main, 100 That acquiescence vain: The Future I may face now I have proved ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... Most of their dark forms were soon blended with the brown covering of the prairie; though the captives, who watched the slightest movement of their enemies with vigilant eyes, were now and then enabled to discern a human figure, drawn against the horizon, as some one, more eager than the rest, rose to his greatest height in order to extend the limits of his view. But it was not long before even these fugitive glimpses of the moving, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... high and his temper mild; so he listened meekly to my account of the misfortune, quietly remarking, that it could not be helped, and that no blame attached to me. It is in these worrying affairs of every-day life that we discern the real beauty of the Christian character. My mother-in-law behaved as well, on this trying occasion, as any lady could do who found her larder suddenly stocked with a quantity of lean tough beef a prospect, indeed, by no means cheering ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... who shake their heads with an air of profound wisdom, and tell you that poor people dress too well now-a-days; that when they were children, folks knew their stations in life better; that you may depend upon it, no good will come of this sort of thing in the end,—and so forth: but I fancy I can discern in the fine bonnet of the working-man's wife, or the feather-bedizened hat of his child, no inconsiderable evidence of good feeling on the part of the man himself, and an affectionate desire to expend the ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... clear beyond mistake, in that hour in the motor car on the road from La Roque to Nant, when Nature, as she sometimes will, incautiously had shown her hand to one whom she herself had schooled to read shrewdly, letting him discern what was her will with him, the snare that was laid for his feet and in which he must soon find himself trapped beyond extrication ... always providing he lacked the wit and resolution to fly his peril, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... ascertained by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to servitude for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons." In this most elaborate sentence, a foreigner would discern no slavery. None but those already acquainted with the serpent, would be able to ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... scene with wondering eyes and parted lips. Craft of all sizes and descriptions plowed and snorted through the ruffled water, and everywhere was life and bustle and activity. And further back, past the lines of docks and warehouses, the girls could discern the spires and ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... shall a man be able to discern them? Consider what I am going to say concerning both kinds of men; and as I speak unto thee so shalt thou prove the prophet of God, and ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... so dark that we cannot see her. All we know is that she is one of four shapes gathered round a small table. Beyond the darkness is a great ingle-nook, in which is seated on a settle a man of fifty. Him we can discern fitfully by the light of the fire. It is not sufficiently bright to enable him to read, but an evening paper lies on his knee. He seems wistful and meek. He is paying no attention to the party round the table. When he hears their voices it is only ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... Mark is doing the same thing, he is observed to adopt the style and manner which Dr. Davidson is pleased to call "sententious" and "abrupt." Take twelve verses in his first chapter, as an example. Between S. Mark xvi. 9-20 and S. Mark i. 9-20, I profess myself unable to discern any real difference of style. I proceed to transcribe the passage which I deliberately propose for comparison; the twelve corresponding verses, namely, in S. Mark's first chapter, which are to be compared ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... issue of mature deliberation. Thou mayest observe," continued he with the air of a good man contending with adversity, "how weak and miserable is man's estate even in the day of good fortune, how hard it is for purblind mortals to discern the right path, especially when two alluring routes are simultaneously presented for their decision! The most obvious and natural course, the one I should have adopted without hesitation half-an-hour ago, would be simply to let Helladia alone. Should she succeed—and ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... the uttermost parts of the earth will be his possession. He who has clothed the arm of the red man with strength, shod his feet with swiftness, and filled his heart with courage, will, in due time, subdue his cruelty and revenge; open his eyes to discern the wondrous things of God's holy law; dispose his mind to acknowledge the Lord of life and glory, and make him willing to receive the ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... formed by Daniel Boone, during the French and Indian War, with the Irish lover of adventure, John Findlay, was the origin of Boone's cherished longing to reach the El Dorado of the West. In this slight incident we may discern the initial inspiration for the epochal movement of westward expansion. Findlay was a trader and horse peddler, who had early migrated to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He had been licensed a trader with the Indians in 1747. During the same year he was married to Elizabeth Harris, daughter of John Harris, ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... into two parts by a grating of exquisitely wrought iron of the same period. Behind this grating is the Rinuccini chapel, painted in fresco by a pupil of Taddeo Gaddi, Giovanni da Milano, in whose work we may discern, in spite of the rigid convention of his master, something sincere, a lightness and grace and even perhaps a certain reliance on Nature, which the authority of Giotto had spoiled for Taddeo himself. It is the stories of the Blessed Virgin and of St. Mary Magdalen that he ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... If we thus discern in the sentiments and faculties of youth the animating and impelling soul of historical events,—if, wherever in history we mark a great movement of humanity, we commonly detect a young man at its head or at its heart,—we must still, I admit, discriminate between ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... wise men of the past lived and died oblivious of that fact. The greatest mechanicians and engineers of antiquity, the men who bridged all the rivers of Europe, the architects who built the cathedrals which are still the wonder of the world, failed to discern what seems to us so obviously simple a proposition, that two parallel lines of rail would diminish the cost and difficulty of transport to a minimum. Without that discovery the steam engine, which has itself been an invention of quite recent ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... may be,' Mr. Dunborough answered. And he took his first airing in a sedan next day. After that he grew so reticent about his affairs, and so truculent when the tutor tried to sound him, that Mr. Thomasson was at his wits' end to discern what was afoot. For some time, however, he got no clue. Then, going to Dunborough's rooms one day, he found them empty, and, bribing the servant, learned that his master had gone to Wallingford. And ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... indignant Verrina, who forgets or stifles the feelings of friendship, in his rage at political apostasy. 'The nature of the Drama,' we are justly told, 'will not suffer the operation of Chance, or of an immediate Providence. Higher spirits can discern the minute fibres of an event stretching through the whole expanse of the system of the world, and hanging, it may be, on the remotest limits of the future and the past, where man discerns nothing save the action itself, hovering unconnected ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... or more characters, rendered invisible through the uniformity of a narration careful of the proprieties, came forth in full daylight, each standing out clear in its countless diversities; how, underneath theological dissertations and monotonous sermons, we discern the throbbings of ever-breathing hearts, the excitements and depressions of the religious life, the unforeseen reaction and pell-mell stir of natural feeling, the infiltrations of surrounding society, the intermittent triumphs of grace, presenting so many shades of difference ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... of the low bank, we could discern a path which traversed the length of the marsh, entering it by a broken gate at a neck of land which we must have passed on our way. Here we crouched and waited. We had heard the half-hour struck ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... easier for them to discern me than for me to do the same by them, for besides the dismay of meeting so many faces at once, the whole room was filled with the smoke of tobacco, a thing which was strange to me, and which caused my eyes to tingle, besides tempting me to cough. I made out, however, ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... were bona fide habitues of the place and so were the two other waterside characters I could faintly discern in one of the dim corners. Meantime a man ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... abused or lost the powers of seeing, of tasting, or of feeling, have been revealed to thee, O sceptic! Thine eyes have penetrated into the dim retrospections of the past. Look onwards, Balsamo, and thou shalt discern the things that are germinating in the womb ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... and we have scarcely time to notice the beautiful proportions of the nave, the carving in the side chapels, or the grotesque figures that we have before alluded to, when the service commences, and we can just discern in the distance the priests at the high altar (looking in their bright stiff robes, and with their backs to the people, like golden beetles under a microscope); we cannot hear distinctly, for the moving of the crowd about us, the creaking ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... do. But that could not last. It ought not to last. God does not wish us to be always as animals, not even always as children; he wishes us to become men; perfect men, who have their senses exercised by experience to discern good ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... to this he wanted a dark gray hair switch, and it was easy to discern that his main idea was ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... clashing cliffs and Circe's perilous sands: Eager of some imperishable good He drave new pathways thro' the trackless flood Foreguarded, fearless, free from Fate's commands. How shall our faith discern the truth he sought? We too must watch and wander till our eyes, Turned skyward from the topmost tower of thought, Haply shall find the star that marked his goal, The watch-fire of transcendent liberties Lighting the endless ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... who has no firm, decided principle, who is constantly wavering backwards and forwards, and who frequently leads others into error by his untenable opinions; who cannot quickly discern the special talent and capacity of his pupils, or discover the proper means to get rid of what is false or wrong, and adopt the speediest road to success, without any one-sided theories of perfection; who mistrusts and blames, worries, ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... 6: with the waves of the deep, &c., geofon-yu weol wintrys wylm, so Kemble reads in his text, and for this reading the translation is correct, but he failed to discern the kenning to 'geofon' in ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... his horse. Then they separated. The crippled rider went one way; the one frustrated in his attempt to get the carbine rode another, Venters thought he made out a third rider, carrying a strange-appearing bundle and disappearing in the sage. But in the rapidity of action and vision he could not discern what it was. Two riders with three horses swung out to the right. Afraid of the long rifle—a burdensome weapon seldom carried by rustlers or riders—they ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... Lastly, where do we discern a stronger mark of candour, or less disposition to extol and magnify, than in the conclusion of the same history? in which the evangelist, after relating that Paul, on his first arrival at Rome, preached to the Jews from morning until evening, ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... the royal navy of Agamemnon, but it was magnified in the eyes of fear to ten or fifteen times the real proportion of its strength and numbers. Had the Greek emperors been endowed with foresight to discern, and vigor to prevent, perhaps they might have sealed with a maritime force the mouth of the Borysthenes. Their indolence abandoned the coast of Anatolia to the calamities of a piratical war, which, after an interval ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... had proved "his affection for the present government" and his "conformity to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England." Schools maintained under such auspices were in no sense free schools. Indeed, humiliating as it is, no student of history can fail to discern the fact that the government of Great Britain, during its supremacy in this territory, did nothing to facilitate the extension or promote the efficiency of free elementary ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... sought to meet him: heralds calling him they sent: "Seven days hence I come" said Eocho; 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 dwell we, with the Shee:[FN46] "In ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... 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, he compels himself to be a peaceable ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... Electra's untrained eyes, almost blinded by spray, could barely discern; and her heart beat like a muffled drum as it drew nearer and nearer. Once she heard a low, chuckling laugh of satisfaction escape the captain; then, with startling distinctness, the ringing of a bell was ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... is," he affirmed, "for I am blind in my left eye, although scarcely anyone would observe it; at least I can only discern light from darkness. It was caused by an accident when I was a child. Do you believe, Miss Minturn, that normal sight could be restored ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... water," said the Major. Accordingly they turn down a long, deep lane, which looks certainly as if it would lead one to a red brook, for the road and banks are of a brick-colour. And so it does, for presently before them they discern a red mill, and a broad, pleasant ford, where a crystal brook dimples and sparkles over a ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... extorted by masses and pardons, "as if," to quote the words of an old writer, "God had given his sheep, not to be pastured, but to be shaven and shorn." This state of things had gone on for centuries, and the people like dumb, driven cattle had submitted. But those who could discern the signs of the times must have seen now that it could not go on much longer. The spread of education was rapidly increasing, several new colleges having been founded in Oxford during Wycliffe's lifetime. A strong spirit of independence, too, was rising among ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... may be classed between the oyster and head-clerk of an office, the two creatures nearest to marble in the zoological kingdom, it is impossible to discern in ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... were infamous, a succession of holes and rocks. As we were gradually ascending, the weather became cooler, and from cool began to grow cold, forcing us to look out for cloaks and shawls. We could now discern some change in the vegetation, or rather a mingling of the trees of a colder climate with those of the tropics, especially the Mexican oak, which begins to flourish here. Fortunately, at one part of the road, the moon enabled us to see the captain of the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... those already extant Authors have trac't but one common beaten Road, repeating for the main what others have in the same homely manner done before them: It hath been my task to denote some new Faculty or Science, that others have not yet discovered; this the Reader will quickly discern by those new Terms of Art which he shall meet withal throughout this whole Volume. Some things I have inserted of Carving and Sewing that I might demonstrate the whole Art. In the contrivance of these ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
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