Quotes About Discernment

He possessed a more pristine sense of artistic discernment, was the implication. Exposure to imperfections—even his own—injured his soul. He felt there was nobility in his choice never to write a book, if it could not be a great book.

It's possible to like bad people, but liking them doesn't make them good.

Experience has taught me that whenever anything is on the tip of my tongue the best thing to do is to keep it there.

Did you ever feel, Hugh, that it might be better to let even ill alone, wondered Cadfael ruefully, rather than let loose worse?

One of the biggest challenges for a writer of nonfiction is to avoid using too much of his or her hard-won material. A great and enduring book isn't comprehensive; it is highly, even ruthlessly, selective, zeroing in on the most evocative and illustrative moments while dispensing with the clutter that might prevent the high points from resonating to maximum effect.

He said likewiseThat a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies,That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright,But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.

Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.

Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.

By which I mean that he saw in commonplace events the movement of greater tides than others saw.

The wiser a man is, the less talkative will he be.

Do not share the knowledge with which you have been blessed with everyone in general, as you do with some people in particular and know that there are some men in whom Allah, may He he glorified, has placed hidden secrets, which they are forbidden to reveal.

Not every man with a heart is understanding, nor every man with an ear a listener, and nor every man with eyes able to see.

People who deal in truth themselves recognize it when they hear it, just as people who deal in diamonds recognize a real stone when they see it.

Truth itself is the best prudence.

Beware of men who can string words together like pearls.

We mustn't say more than we should, but we mustn't say less than we must.

The Puritan Thomas Brooks once wrote, "We know metals by their tinkling, and men by their talking."[113

The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration.

É melhor repelir dez verdades do que admitir uma única falsidade, uma só teoria errônea.

That thing you do where you don't give people a chance before they've had any chances in the first place.

She watched him stop to pat the mayor on the back. He stumbled a little in the crowd, and his left hand disappeared ever so briefly inside the mayor's tuxedo pocket. It was over in a flash, a blink, a second. And Macey was quite certain she was the only person in the entire room to have seen it, but that was just as well. At least, Macey had seen enough. And at last, the boy made sense." — Double Crossed by Ally Carter

There are some secrets we keep because we can't bear to let them out and some because it's better to keep them in.

lo que les permite discernir con implacable rigor las fantasías y deseos propios de cada sexo pese a que, en apariencia, sólo han tenido ocasión de conocer uno de las dos.

One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we'll need a new definition.