Discernible Quotes & Sayings

Our educational system is like an automobile which has strong rear lights, brightly illuminating the past. But looking forward things are barely discernible. — Hermann Oberth

As the prospect gradually revealed itself and disclosed the scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark, like my memory over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering the unknown objects that had been around me in my sleep. At first they were faintly discernible in the mist, and above them the later stars still glimmered. That pale interval over, the picture began to enlarge and fill up so fast that at every new peep I could have found enough to look at for an hour. Imperceptibly my candles became the only incongruous part of the morning, the dark places in my room all melted away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful landscape, prominent in which the old Abbey Church, with its massive tower, threw a softer train of shadow on the view than seemed compatible with its rugged character. — Charles Dickens

I recently asked more than seventy eminent researchers if they would have done I their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: no. I also examined the outstanding biodiscoveries of the past century: the discovery of the double helix; the characterization of the ribosome: the mapping of genomes; research on medications and drug reactions: improvements in food production and sanitation; the development of new surgeries; and others. I even queried biologists working in areas where one would expect the Darwinian paradigm to have most benefited research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I found that Darwin's theory had provided no discernible guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss. — Philip S. Skell

Mr L Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was forty, fat and shabby and worked for the local council. Curiously enough, though he didn't know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan, though intervening generations and racial mixing had so juggled his genes that he had no discernible Mongoloid characteristics, and the only vestiges left in Mr L Prosser of his mighty ancestry were a pronounced stoutness about the tum and a predilection for little fur hats. — Douglas Adams

Criticism is the windows and chandeliers of art: it illuminates the enveloping darkness in which art might otherwise rest only vaguely discernible, and perhaps altogether unseen. — George Jean Nathan

[When thinking about the new relativity and quantum theories] I have felt a homesickness for the paths of physical science where there are ore or less discernible handrails to keep us from the worst morasses of foolishness. — Arthur Eddington

My mother attended the local church, Saint Nicolas, and consequently, I attended that church and its Sunday School. My only prizes from the Sunday School were 'for attendance,' so I presume my atheism, which developed when I left home to attend university, although latent, was discernible. — Michael Smith

And here's something else I learned: you lose some people that way - fast and blinding. But some people inch away from you slowly, in barely discernible steps. In the end it almost doesn't matter. They're just as gone. — Lauren Fox

A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned? — Alan Moore

The sciences throw an inexpressible grace over our compositions, even where they are not immediately concerned; as their effects are discernible where we least expect to find them. — Tacitus

The most celebrated American author of the twentieth century, Bellow objected during the first part of his career to being designated a "Jewish writer, " but it was he who demonstrated how a Jewish voice could speak for an integrated America. With Bellow, Jewishness moved in from the immigrant margins to become a new form of American regionalism. Yet he did not have to write about Jews in order to write as a Jew. Bellow's curious mingling of laughter and trembling is particularly manifest in his novel Henderson the Rain King, that follows an archetypal Protestant American into mythic Africa. Bellow not only influenced and paved the way for other American Jewish writers like Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick, but naturalized the immigrant voice: the American novel came to seem freshly authentic when it spoke in the voice of one of its discernible minorities. — Hana Wirth-Nesher

Perhaps everything was connected to everything, in a discernible if nebulous way, and if one might only trace the fibers and filaments of those connections, one might ... One might what? Observe the Grand Design? Untangle all the puppet strings and discover whose hands (or claws) are pulling them? End the ancient search for order and meaning in the universe? — Tom Robbins

He was one of the fortunate few for whom there simply was no discernible line between work and play, between creation and recreation. — George F. Will

I had the same sensation as when we watch someone sleep. When asleep we all become children again. Perhaps because in the state of slumber we can do no wrong and are unconscious of life, the greatest criminal and most self- absorbed egotist are holy, by a natural magic, as long as they're sleeping. For me there's no discernible difference between killing a child and killing a sleeping man. — Fernando Pessoa

About the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity - an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn - a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hue — Edgar Allan Poe

The hope of Elevation has to remain something random, impossible to see properly, given not to those who earn it but to those with no discernible right to it. Resentment, fear, loathing, and a tiny, flickering light of hope always just out of reach, that is Hell, yes? — Simon Kurt Unsworth

The gravity of the time is such that every new avenue of peace, no matter how dimly discernible, should be explored. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Boris laughed, and threw out some fake-looking gang sign. "Suit yourself, yo," he said, in his "gangsta" voice (discernible from his regular voice only by the hand gesture and the "yo") as he got up and roll-walked out. "Nigga gotz to eat. — Donna Tartt

In a city the multiplicity of threads forced a whirling confusion on the loom but here the simple pattern and the slow weaving made purpose more discernible. — Elizabeth Goudge

All eyes turned to look at us' would be a slipshod way of putting it; eyes don't turn anyway, heads do, but as our little group joined the fringe of the assembly, there was a discernible swivelling of attention in our direction. — A.P.

In conclusion, the idea of direction on the part of the photographer has its greatest value when its processes are least discernible to the spectator. — Arthur Rothstein

He can't think, he can't write. There's no discernible talent. — Harold Bloom

To the best of our scientific understanding, determinism and randomness have divided the entire cake between them, leaving not even a crumb for 'freedom'. The sacred word 'freedom' turns out to be, just like 'soul', an empty term that carries no discernible meaning. Free will exists only in the imaginary stories we humans have invented. — Yuval Noah Harari

Being different doesn't make you broken. Look at me, I'm the smallest elf in all of the AAD. My father was a toy soldier, yet I have no discernible skills whatsoever. I might feel a little lost at times, but I'm not broken — Charlie Cochet

The attacks of 9/11 were the biggest surprise in American history, and for the past ten years we haven't stopped being surprised. The war on terror has had no discernible trajectory, and, unlike other military conflicts, it's almost impossible to define victory. You can't document the war's progress on a world map or chart it on a historical timetable in a way that makes any sense. A country used to a feeling of being in command and control has been whipsawed into a state of perpetual reaction, swinging wildly between passive fear and fevered, often thoughtless, activity, at a high cost to its self-confidence. — George Packer

Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear, and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses, he will endure or be forgotten. — Ernest Hemingway,

The leaky-replacement hypothesis - assuming for the moment that it's correct - provides the strongest possible evidence for the closeness of Neanderthals and modern humans. The two may or may not have fallen in love; still, they made love. Their hybrid children may or may not have been regarded as monsters; nevertheless someone - perhaps Neanderthals at first, perhaps humans - cared for them. Some of these hybrids survived to have kids of their own, who, in turn, had kids, and so on up to the present day. Even now, at least thirty thousand years after the fact, the signal is discernible: all non-Africans, from the New Guineans to the French to the Han Chinese, carry somewhere between one and four percent Neanderthal DNA. One — Elizabeth Kolbert

In the fall of 2004, after both WMDs and easy victory were revealed as mirages, a presidential aide made an astounding admission to The New York Times Magazine. The White House, he said, didn't waste time worrying about those "in what we call the reality-based community" who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." That, the aide said, "is not the way the world really works anymore. . . . When we act, we create our own reality. — Seth Mnookin

Many are they who have a taste and love for drawing, but no talent; and this will be discernible in boys who are not diligent and never finish their drawings with shading. — Leonardo Da Vinci

There are things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken or written of, though it would be very wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been. — A.S. Byatt

Much like trains in India, grief is a circular, irrational process with no discernible rhythm or timetable. Here it comes, there it goes. — Suzanne Finnamore

This meeting was like many of the meetings that I would go to over the course of two years. The only way I can describe it is that, well, the president is like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection. — Paul O'Neill

If it wasn't for coffee, I'd have no discernible personality at all. — David Letterman

Morality is a closely knit garment that binds tightly when it binds at all, but the vastnesses that lie between the stars are prone to unraveling it, to plucking it apart into so many loose threads, each brightly colored, but forming no discernible pattern. — George R R Martin

We left home, married, had children of our own, found the seeds of meanness blooming also within us. Dad began dresssing the pole with more complexity and less discernible logic. He draped some kind of fur over it on Groundhog Day and lugged out a floodlight to ensure a shadow. — George Saunders

You've invaded my mind and I can't get you out of it," he accused with discernible disdain. She avoided looking at him and said, "Then you should forget." "Forget?" he thundered,"EVERYTHING reminds me of you!" She turned to confront him, slowing lifting her eyes to meet the disgust in his. "That's not my doing," she countered, "That's your doing and you are the only one who can control it. — Donna Lynn Hope

Nothing discernible to the eye of the spirit is more brilliant or obscure than man; nothing is more formidable, complex, mysterious, and infinite. There is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul. — Victor Hugo

She imagined she could pull Time like taffy, stretching it longer and longer between her hands until the finest point had been reached, the point just before breaking, and she could live there. A point at the center of time with no going forward, no going back. Clasped in this way, without speaking, walking into no discernible ending, she could almost believe they tread on time. — Sarah Blake

We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, and at a single point and for no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything. — Terence McKenna

She felt some strange yearning, but she couldn't decide what it was for. Not for the city: it seemed like another country to her now, remembered, not felt. She knew if she were there, walking past the market with its glistening stacks of fruit that sometimes rolled onto the pavement, stepping into the pharmacy for overpriced shampoo and body cream, passing the windows full of nice clothes like the clothes she already has (once she got a linen blouse home only to discover that she owned one almost exactly like it), she would be convinced that she could no longer stand to be be away, that she missed it all terribly. But from here that life seemed unreal, like something she saw in a movie. She wondered if that's how her grandparents had managed to leave the old country behind, whether it had ceased to exist as a discernible thing once it was gone along the watery horizon, whether they had told themselves that some day they would come back to reclaim it. — Anna Quindlen

To such an extent does passion manifest itself in us as a temporary and distinct character, which not only takes the place of our normal character but actually obliterates the signs by which that character has hitherto been discernible. — Marcel Proust

HORKLUMP M.O.M. Classification: X The Horklump comes from Scandinavia but is now widespread throughout northern Europe. It resembles a fleshy, pinkish mushroom covered in sparse, wiry black bristles. A prodigious breeder, the Horklump will cover an average garden in a matter of days. It spreads sinewy tentacles rather than roots into the ground to search for its preferred food of earthworms. The Horklump is a favourite delicacy of gnomes but otherwise has no discernible use. H — J.K. Rowling

Many people believe that determining who is 'black' is rather easy, a task simplified by the administration of the one-drop rule. Under the one-drop rule, any discernible African ancestry stamps a person as 'black.' — Randall Kennedy

truth cannot "be reduced to aphorism or formulas. It is something alive and unpronounceable. Story creates an atmosphere in which [truth] becomes discernible as a pattern."3 — Parker J. Palmer

Yes, he scorned his family's decadent ways, but perhaps that wasn't so much about the money per se, but rather the wastefulness of it; the lack of energy and drive it represented, as if the Ransomes were - like that postmodern throng of the famous-for-being-famous set - some odd collection of spoiled Emperor-brats walking a red carpet without any discernible talent to clothe them. The things the Ransomes - and their once-large fortune - could have accomplished ... they could have changed the world, or at least impacted it in positive ways. — Roberta Pearce

When a man's heart is right with God the mysterious utterances of the Bible are spirit and life to him. Spiritual truth is discernible only to a pure heart, not to a keen intellect. It is not a question of profundity of intellect, but of purity of heart. — Oswald Chambers

There is no human feeling to the US securities markets and sometimes no discernible evidence of human intelligence either. But they work. — Robert J. Eaton

Opinions are like nipples, everybody has one. Some have firm points, others are barely discernible through layers, and some are displayed at every opportunity regardless of whether the audience has stated "I am interested in your nipples" or not. — David Thorne

The days shuffled by like bland schoolgirls. I didn't notice their individual faces, only their basic uniform: day and night, day and night.
I had no patience for showers or balanced meals. I did a lot of lying on floors - childish certainly, but when one can lie on floors without anyone seeing one, trust me, one will lie on a floor. I discovered, too, the fleeting yet discernible joy of biting into a Whitman's chocolate and throwing the remaining half behind the sofa in the library. I could read, read, read until my eyes burned and the words floating like noodles in soup. — Marisha Pessl

Gabe's room was as dark as a cave. He was asleep under the covers, a barely discernible lump. — Joseph Finder

The average American expends more time becoming informed about choosing a car than choosing a candidate. But, then, the consequences of the former choice are immediate and discernible. — George Will

REPRESENTATIVE, n. In national politics, a member of the Lower House in this world, and without discernible hope of promotion in the next. — Ambrose Bierce

Outward things are promiscuously dispensed, and no man's spiritual estate is discernible by the view of his temporal. When God draws the sword, it may cut off the righteous as well as the wicked, — John Flavel

When a phrase is born, it is both good and bad at the same time. The secret of its success rests in a crux that is barely discernible. One's fingertips must grasp the key, gently warming it. And then the key must be turned once, not twice. — Isaac Babel

Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it. — Robert Anton Wilson

Despite [] promises, I am concerned that there has been no discernible progress in the case. Equally concerning is the fact that Goran Radosavljevic, the commander of the facility where the Bytyqi's were murdered, remains a close advisor to the current government ... I call upon the Serbian government to also aspire to new heights in its own processing of war crimes from the 1990's and to finally ensure justice in the Bytyqi case. — Lee Zeldin

Indeed, of the major religions, Islam offers no discernible sliver of valid notion for How Life Works. — Thomas Daniel Nehrer

Like Trush, Sheriff Gorunov is a born Alpha, a handsome, fire-breathing dragon of a man who smokes with an alarming vigor: cigarette clamped between his canines at the point where filter and tobacco meet, the act of inhaling fully integrated into breath and speech such that there is no discernible pause, only billowing smoke that seems to be a natural by-product of a voice that booms even in the confines of his quiet kitchen. — John Vaillant

London doesn't love the latent or the lurking, has neither time, nor taste, nor sense for anything less discernible than the red flag in front of the steam-roller. It wants cash over the counter and letters ten feet high. — Henry James

I know now what was happening to me, what was overwhelming me, what was about to consume and almost destroy me. Didier had even given me a name for it - assassin grief, he'd once called it: the kind of grief that lies in wait and attacks you from ambush, with no warning and no mercy. I know now that assassin grief can hide for years and then strike suddenly on the happiest day, without discernible reason or exegesis. But on that day, ... almost a year after Khader's death, I couldn't understand the dark and trembling mood that was moving in me, swelling to the sorrow I'd too long denied. I couldn't understand it, so i tried to fight it as a man fights pain or despair. But you can't bite down on assassin grief and will it away. The enemy stalks you, step for step, and knows your every move before you make it. The enemy is your own grieving heart and, when it strikes, it can't miss. — Gregory David Roberts

America is still a free country - nobody is saying it isn't - but we accept that, in the face of discernible risk, or even imaginable risk, the government has an obligation to step in and save us. — Patrick Bedard

As a small business owner for the last 15 years, when I think of what truly changed my life, it was my faith, a strong family, my mom did a really, really good job of encouraging me in very clear and discernible ways. — Tim Scott

Mr. Presley has no discernible singing ability. — Jack Gould

The body in Chinese medicine, then, is not an aggregate of discrete morphological substances linked to each other anatomically by means of mechanical structures and physiologically by way of interactive functional systems. Rather, it is a complex unit of functions and a site of regular transformations. While these transformations have discernible patterns, the body itself is always becoming. — Volker Scheid

From the earliest beginnings of Lyndon Johnson's political life - from his days at college when he had captured control of campus politics - his tactics had consistently revealed a pragmatism and a cynicism that had no discernible limits. — Robert A. Caro

The myth of the dragon is a very peculiar one, precisely because it is a truly global myth. Giant serpents appear in mythologies from all over the world: China, Scandinavia, Greece, Persia, Germany, Central America, the United Kingdom, even Africa. There is no discernible reason for this. How could the myth of a large serpentine creature be so consistent across the ancient world? From: Dragons in History by Eleanor Lock (Border Press, London, 1999) — Matthew Reilly

As every one of us knows, there are some festivals and games in which everything goes right, and every element lifts up, animates, and exalts every other, just as there are theatrical and musical performances which without any clearly discernible cause seem to ascend miraculously to glorious climaxes and intensely felt experiences, whereas others, just as well prepared, remain no more than decent tries. — Hermann Hesse

Iago, on the other hand, seems to be malice personified, a manifestation of manifold vice with no discernible vestiges of grace. — Williiam Shakespeare

He is not drowning His sheep when He washeth them, nor killing them when He is shearing them. But by this He showeth that they are His own: and the new-shorn sheep do most visibly bear His name or mark; when it is almost worn out and scarce discernible on them that have the longest fleece. — Richard Baxter

A great ratatouille is one in which the vegetables interact with each other but are still discernible from each other. The trick is to cook them just right: not over, not under. — Yotam Ottolenghi

The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Anything whose presence or absence makes no discernible difference is no essential part of the whole. — Aristotle.

There are still many souls to be won for Christ," she answered with quiet dignity, eyes downcast - but not, he figured, in humility. "Even here. Perhaps, especially here. Where better to spread his love, than a country just recently ravaged by war?"
"Where better to be kidnapped and sold into slavery, than a country just recently ravaged by war?" with a discernible sneer. — V.S. Carnes

Even now, at least thirty thousand years after the fact, the signal is discernible: all non-Africans, from the New Guineans to the French to the Han Chinese, carry somewhere between one and four percent Neanderthal DNA. — Elizabeth Kolbert

In a single week I had lost the two most important men in my life. Yet the word "lost" was misleading. Neither had died and it had been years since either had played any outwardly discernible role in my life. Internally, however, they have been pivotal, at the centre of everything. Now that centre, my centre, had slipped. — Claire Holden Rothman

I was having a hard time at school, in terms of being crap at everything, with no discernible talent, — Daniel Radcliffe

The ultimate singularity is the Big Bang, which physicists believe was responsible for the birth of the universe. We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, at a single point and for no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything. It is a notion that is, in fact, utterly absurd, yet terribly important. Those so-called rational assumptions flow from this initial impossible situation. Western religion has its own singularity in the form of the apocalypse, an event placed not at the beginning of the universe but at its end. This seems a more logical position than that of science. If singularities exist at all it seems easier to suppose that they might arise out of an ancient and highly complexified cosmos, such as our own, than out of a featureless and dimensionless mega-void. — Terence McKenna

Telepathy' literally means to feel at a distance, just as 'telephone' is to hear at a distance and 'television' is to see at a distance. The word suggests the communication not of thoughts but of feelings, emotions. Around a quarter of all Americans believe they've experienced something like telepathy. People who know each other very well, who live together, who are practised in one another's feeling tones, associations and thinking styles can often anticipate what the partner will say. This is merely the usual five senses plus human empathy, sensitivity and intelligence in operation. It may feel extrasensory, but it's not at all what's intended by the word 'telepathy'. If something like this were ever conclusively demonstrated, it would, I think, have discernible physical causes -perhaps electrical currents in the brain. Pseudoscience, rightly or wrongly labelled, is by no means the same thing as the supernatural, which is by definition something somehow outside of Nature. — Carl Sagan

The scientific revolution proved that there are objective, discernible laws of physical phenomena. Take gravity, for instance. You don't exactly have faith in the law of gravity so much as you just know that the law is the law. Now we are learning that there are objective, discernible laws of non-physical phenomena. These two sets of laws are parallel. Externally, the universe supports our physical survival. Photosynthesis in plants and plankton in the ocean produce oxygen, which we need in order to breathe. Internally the universe also supports our survival. Emotionally and psychologically the internal equivalent to oxygen, what we need in order to survive, is love. And human relationships exist to produce love. — Marianne Williamson

Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious. — Michael Shermer

I plucked the shower gel I used this morning from the grocery store shelf for no discernible reason. Why that shower gel? Was it because it had shea butter in it - do I even know what shea butter is? - or was it because it promised to make me feel younger, more refreshed, or softer to the touch? Was it because the packaging was simple and clean or was it because I was rushing through the store and just needed some G.D. shower gel? — Liza Palmer

Behind these two booths was an enormous roller coaster, a phrase which here mean 'a series of small carts where people can sit and race up and down steep and frightening hills of tracks, for no discernible reason — Lemony Snicket

On the other hand, Andrea had decided last month, on the occasion of her twelfth birthday and for no discernible reason (at least, none that an adult could discern), that from then on her given name would be Fitzwinkle. And then — Alan Dean Foster

Dinner will be served at the usual time and I am pleased to say there will be no discernible traces left of the recent occurrence by that time. — Kazuo Ishiguro

The piddling ignoramuses who deny that there is a distinct, discernible, objective western tradition are just woozy literati. — Camille Paglia

We want a president who is as much like an American tourist as possible. Someone with the same goofy grin, the same innocent intentions, the same naive trust; a president with no conception of foreign policy and no discernible connection to the U.S. government, whose Nice Guyism will narrow the gap between the U.S. and us until nobody can tell the difference. — Florence King

I can kill with a single word. I can hurl a ball of fire into the midst of my enemies. I rule a squadron of skeletal warriors, who can destroy by touch alone. I can raise a wall of ice to protect those I serve. The invisible is discernible to my eyes. Ordinary magic spells crumble in my presence ... But I bow in the presence of a master.
Lord Soth to Raistlin Majere — Margaret Weis

If we are practicing our faith and seeking the companionship of the Holy Spirit, his presence can be felt in our hearts and in our homes. A family having daily family prayers and seeking to keep the commandments of God and honor his name and speak lovingly to one another will have a spiritual feeling in their home that will be discernible to all who enter it. — Dallin H. Oaks

In the space of a single year, a crumbling rural village had sprouted an army town, like a great parasitical growth. The former peacetime aspect of the place was barely discernible. The village pond was where the dragoons watered their horses, infantry exercised in the orchards, soldiers lay in the meadows sunning themselves. All the peacetime institutions collapsed, only what was needed for war remained. Hedges and fences were broken or simply torn down for easier access, and everywhere there were large signs giving directions to military traffic. While roofs caved in, and furniture was gradually used up as firewood, telephone lines and electricity cables were installed. Cellars were extended outwards and downwards to make bomb shelters for the residents; the removed earth was dumped in the gardens. The village no longer knew any demarcations or distinctions between thine and mine.
pp. 36-37 — Ernst Junger

Long, blue, spiky-edged shadows crept out across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible, gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the alpenglow, to me the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed like devout worshippers waiting to be blessed. — John Muir

Let me see if I've got this Santa business straight. You say he wears a beard, has no discernible source of income and flies to cities all over the world under cover of darkness? You sure this guy isn't laundering illegal drug money? — Tom Armstrong

Don't bitch or punish the world: just create. Create something nobody's ever seen before and there is a good chance the world will notice you. Attacking teen girls on the internet is the saddest form of masturbation that exists and requires no discernible skill or talent. Because if you're not being useful in this world, you're being useless. Don't be useless: go make stuff that makes people happy. — Kevin Smith

They hate people and their stories; they have hated for so long and with such intensity that in the end the darkness enveloped their whole bodies until their shapes were no longer discernible. That is also why they are so difficult to defeat, because they can disappear into walls or into the ground or float up. They're ferocious and bloodthirsty, and if you're bitten by one you don't just die; a far more serious and terrible fate lies in store: you lose your imagination. (talking about shadows) — Fredrik Backman

I am always a different man; a reinterpretation of the man I was yesterday, and the day before, and all the days I have lived. The past is gone, was always gone; it does not exist, except in memory, and what is memory but thought, a copy of perception, no less but no more replete with truth than any passing whim, fancy, or other agitation of the mind. And if it is actions, words, thoughts that define an individual, those definitions alter like the weather - if continuity and pattern are often discernible, so are chaos and sudden change. — K.J. Bishop

Polarities of the 'authentic' vs. the 'inauthentic' are easily discernible in recreational modes. The criteria of authenticity are not necessarily objective but rather have to do with the rules by which the self allows or disallows its own experience. — Walker Percy

Only in stillness does the imperceivable become discernible — Bryant McGill

An inert historical fact is any fact about a perfectly ordinary arrangement of matter in the world at some point in the past that is no longer discernible, a fact that has left no footprints at all in the world today. — Daniel Dennett

Outside theology and fantastic literature, few can doubt that the main features of our universe are its dearth of meaning and lack of discernible purpose. And yet, with bewildering optimism, we continue to assemble whatever scraps of information we can gather in scrolls and books and computer chips, on shelf after library shelf, whether material, virtual or otherwise, pathetically intent on lending the world a semblance of sense and order, while knowing perfectly well that, however much we'd like to believe the contrary, our pursuits are sadly doomed to failure. — Alberto Manguel

...one good decision can totally change the trajectory of our lives. And that one good decision will lead to better decisions. But it starts by making the right decision when no one is looking.

There is a past cause and future effect to every decision that goes way beyond what is discernible in the here and now. Decisions have long and often complex genealogies. And every decision is a genesis moment that has the potential to radically alter not just our destiny but the course of human history as well. — Mark Batterson

As a rule, ladies of the Royal Family wear light coloured clothes because such colours are more discernible against a great crowd. — Norman Hartnell