Quotes about Discernment

Prayer is the difference between seeing with our physical eyes and seeing with our spiritual eyes.

Simplicity is something more, something other than just doing without or doing it yourself. Its essence is neither forsaking nor striving. Its essence, rather, is listening: What has God put in your heart? Simplicity is, once having discerned that, being content with it. Simplifying it further: simplicity is being content with God.

It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt

Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.

But in all cases we must guard most carefully against what is pleasant, and pleasure itself, because we are not impartial judges of it.

To feel or act towards the right person to the right extent at the right time for the right reason in the right way - is not easy, and it is not everyone that can do it, hence to do these things well is a rare, laudable and fine achievement.

When in doubt, say nothing and move on.

Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.

There are seventy-five perfumes, which it is very necessary that a criminal expert should be able to distinguish from each other, and cases have more than once within my own experience depended upon their prompt recognition.

consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.

What must be seen is not mere news and not mere knowledge. What must be seen is light.

What this means is that if you want to grow up and feast on the fullness of God's revelation, you don't do it by jumping from milk to meat. You do it by the way you drink the milk. The milk has to make you a certain kind of discerning person before you can digest the meat.