Quotes About Discernment

My M.O. as far as choosing projects is I really try not to work. I try to not do the scripts that are offered me. I'm in this wonderful position to be able to do that.

It may be doubtful, at first, whether a person is an enemy or friend. Meat, if not properly digested, becomes poison; But poison, if used rightly, may turn medicinal.

People should not expect the state to protect them from fraudsters. If we do, we get into the habit of neglecting our own powers of intellectual discernment.

The best protection for the people is not necessarily to believe everything people tell them.

All of us judge by sight and not by knowledge.

Those who look for filth, can find it at the height of noon.

Fortune truly helps those who are of good judgement.

O Zeus, why is it you have given men clear ways of testing whether gold is counterfeit but, when it comes to men, the body carries no stamp of nature for distinguishing bad from good.

O Zeus! why hast thou granted unto man clear signs to know the sham in gold, while on man's brow no brand is stamped whereby to gauge the villain's heart?

O Zeus! Why have you given us clear signs to tell True gold from counterfeit; but when we need to know Bad men from good, the flesh bears no revealing mark?

Any man of good sense should never have his children taught to be unusually clever.

O God, you have given to mortals a sure method Of telling the gold that is pure from the counterfeit; Why is there no mark engraved upon men's bodies, By which we could know the true ones from the false ones?

A prudent scepticism is the most profitable quality a man can have.

ETEO. Having chosen them for boldness, or prudence in judgment? CRE. For both; for one without the other availeth nothing.

If we could only learn to look on evil as evil, whether it's clothed in filth or monotony or magnificence.

What is a gentleman, anyway? He's a man who prefers the first edition of a book to the last edition of a newspaper.

Then tell me all the reasons why you're going to marry me in June." "Well, because you're so clean. You're sort of blowy clean, like I am. There's two sorts, you know. One's like Dick: he's clean like polished pans. You and I are clean like streams and winds. I can tell whenever I see a person whether he is clean, and if so, which kind of clean he is.

judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person

I brought a picture with me that I had at home, of a girl in a swing with a castle and pretty blue bubbles in the background, to hang in my room, but that nurse here said the girl was naked from the waist up and not appropriate. You know, I've had that picture for fifty years and I never knew she was naked. If you ask me, I don't think the old men they've got here can see well enough to notice that she's bare-breasted. But, this is a Methodist home, so she's in the closet with my gallstones.

taste doesn't cost a dime, but if you don't have it, you can't buy it for a million dollars

What matters is to know how to see, ... To know how to see when seeing

With grown people, a road led either to heaven or hell, but with children there were always stops along the way where their attention could be turned with a trifle.

There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. The Nature and Aim of Fiction

All things make sense; you just have to fathom how they make sense.