Discerning Mind Quotes & Sayings

Imagination is the organ through which the soul within us recognizes a soul without us; the spiritual eye by which the mind perceives and converses with the spiritualities of nature under her material forms; which tends to exalt even the senses into soul by discerning a soul in the objects of sense. — Henry Norman Hudson

The hossanas of the multitude can never bring satisfaction to the discerning. Yet there exist those chamaleons of popularity who find their joy, not in the sweet breath of Apollo, but in the smell of the crowd. And not in mind: Do not be taken in by what are miracles to the populace, for the ignorant do not rise above marveling. Thus the stupidity of a crowd is lost in admiration, even as the brain of an individual uncovers the trick. — Baltasar Gracian

He who studies it [Nature] has continually the exquisite pleasure of discerning or half discerning and divining laws; regularities glimmer through an appearance of confusion, analogies between phenomena of a different order suggest themselves and set the imagination in motion; the mind is haunted with the sense of a vast unity not yet discoverable or nameable. There is food for contemplation which never runs short; you are gazing at an object which is always growing clearer, and yet always, in the very act of growing clearer, presenting new mysteries. — John Robert Seeley

There is nothing passive about mindfulness. One might even say that it expresses a specific kind of passion - a passion for discerning what is subjectively real in every moment. It is a mode of cognition that is, above all, undistracted, accepting, and (ultimately) nonconceptual. Being mindful is not a matter of thinking more clearly about experience; it is the act of experiencing more clearly, including the arising of thoughts themselves. Mindfulness is a vivid awareness of whatever is appearing in one's mind or body - thoughts, sensations, moods - without grasping at the pleasant or recoiling from the unpleasant. — Sam Harris

No one but The Owner of All Infernal Names can faithfully claim to know if He is pleased more by the total aggregate of suffering distributed across all of His creation, or whether He is more circumspect and discerning in His pleasure taking, savouring discreet yet increasingly potent, increasingly more complex parcels of sophisticated and intimate misery. Whether it is a matter of quantity over quality, the enormity of the marketplace or the specialisation of product groups and services within that marketplace, or a depraved combination of both, no human mind can determine, or perhaps ever comprehend. — John Zande

Creativity expands the mind, stretches it beyond ordinary human comprehension, resulting in the mind being elastic and capable of transcending and discerning complex ideas. — Michael Bassey Johnson

The sectaries of a persecuted religion, depressed by fear, animated with resentment, and perhaps heated by enthusiasm, are seldom in a proper temper of mind calmly to investigate, or candidly to appreciate, the motives of their enemies, which often escape the impartial and discerning view even of those who are placed at a secure distance from the flames of persecution. — Edward Gibbon

Really, this people, only yesterday so intelligent and discerning, seem to have been overcome by a disease of the mind — Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen

It is such an innocent, intuitively discerning mind that helps make the Eastern guru and the Desert Abba "master". Where intimate Source radiates among non-Christians then surely we must be dealing with the "other sheep" manifesting the cosmic Christ. — Tilden Edwards

Government in general, any government anywhere, is a thing of exquisite comicality to a discerning mind. — Joseph Conrad