The complete discrimination system method is employed to find exact solutions for a dispersive cubic–quintic nonlinear Schrödinger equation with third order and fourth order time derivatives. As a result, we derive a range of solutions which include triangular function solutions, kink solitary wave solutions, dark solitary wave solutions, Jacobian elliptic function solutions, rational function solutions and implicit analytical solutions. Numerical simulations are presented to visualize the mechanism of Eq. (1) by selecting appropriate parameters of the solutions. The comparison between our results and other's works are also given.