Quotes About Discernment

One concept the non-old have trouble getting their minds around is the difference between taste and judgment. It's fine not to like almost anything, except maybe Al Green. That's taste, yours to do with as you please, critical deployment included. By comparison, judgment requires serious psychological calisthenics. But the fact that objectivity only comes naturally in math doesn't mean it can't be approximated in art.

Louise Earle was credible, cogent, in full command of her faculties, and did not seem to be a person who would miss seeing a cop carrying a bag of funny money through her living room. Of

People like us can't afford to be surprised, Sarah. We don't have the luxury of making mistakes or being caught unaware. We have to sense who's on the other side of the door before they knock, and we have to know if they're a friend or an enemy.

You've got to love what's lovable, and hate what's hateable. It takes brains to see the difference.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense.

We shall be known by the delicacy of where we stop short.

Out of the mouths of babes may come gems of wisdom, but also garbage.

When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet.

The key to power, then, is the ability to judge who is best able to further your interests in all situations. Keep friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent.

If you are observing someone you naturally dislike, or who reminds you of someone unpleasant in your past, you will tend to see almost any cue as unfriendly or hostile. You will do the opposite for people you like. In these exercises you must strive to subtract your personal preferences and prejudices about people.

The secret enemy, though, will react with anger. Any strong emotion and you will know that there's something boiling under the surface. Often the best way to get people to reveal themselves is to provoke tension and argument.

If you feel lost and confused, if you lose your sense of direction, if you cannot tell the difference between friend and foe, you have only yourself to blame.

The straight trees are cut down, the crooked ones are left standing. Kautilya, Indian philosopher, third century B.C. KEYS

It is said that the price of freedom is vigilance, and an important form of vigilance is attention to political rhetoric, which often reveals how things are going.

Sometimes it's better not to see. Sometimes it's better to have a choice.

It is appropriate for the "men of Issachar" to strive to "understand the times" and do battle with those ideas that corrupt the world (1 Chron. 12:32, 2 Cor. 10:4-5). On the other hand, the Christian reader must consciously hold the ideas at arm's length, so as not to commune with the unfruitful works of darkness, or meditate long and hard on things that are not true, not lovely, and not pure (Phil. 4:8).

Takes a donkey to know a donkey.

That must be our man," Farid said. The tall Talib with the black

And you knows ugly when you sees ugly, don't ya, sweet thang.

If a man can hear the truth he's spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools..........

El inteligente pobre es un observador mucho más fino que el rico inteligente. El pobre mira a su alrededor a cada paso que da, espía suspicazmente cada palabra que oye a las gentes que encuentra; a cada paso que da él mismo impone a sus pensamientos y sus sentimientos un deber, una norma. Tiene el oído fino, es impresionable, es un hombre experimentado, su alma tiene quemaduras.

Oh, a woman can't tell one man from another; not always—not often.

I had an uncanny knack for sizing up males—I was a regular "manalyst." My secret? I always went negative, and the guys, well, they always accommodated.

She had challenged his whole life plan—to find God's will and do it— said he was fixated on finding the one thing God intended for him, when every moment was an opportunity. What if she was right? Could one choice be God's will, and another as well? It might not be about finding the one right answer as much as knowing the heart of God and choosing from the possibilities.