#testimony

Testimony demands to be interpreted because of the dialectic of meaning and event that traverses it. ↗

— Paul Ricoeur

#demands #dialectic #event #interpreted #meaning

Testimony gives something to be interpreted. ↗

— Paul Ricoeur

#interpreted #something #testimony

I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony. ↗

— Mark Strand

#american #been #i #personal #poetry

The reporter wrote with the hope that he would get a by-line in the Times, a testimony to his being alive on that day and all the tomorrows of microfilm. ↗

— Gay Talese

#being #day #get #his #hope

Testimony should be a philosophical problem and not limited to legal or historical contexts where it refers to the account of a witness who reports what he has seen. ↗

— Paul Ricoeur

#contexts #historical #legal #limited #philosophical

Remember the sufferings of Christ, the storms that were weathered... the crown that came from those sufferings which gave new radiance to the faith... All saints give testimony to the truth that without real effort, no one ever wins the crown. ↗

— Thomas Becket

#christ #crown #effort #ever #faith

There were no gifts. Everything is properly accounted for. I provided testimony and evidence to the committee... This was all stuff that was previously known. ↗

— Robert Torricelli

#committee #everything #evidence #gifts #i

Not in order to justify, but simply in order to explain my lack of consistency, I say: Look at my present life and then at my former life, and you will see that I do attempt to carry them out. It is true that I have not fulfilled one thousandth part of them [Christian precepts], and I am ashamed of this, but I have failed to fulfill them not because I did not wish to, but because I was unable to. Teach me how to escape from the net of temptations that surrounds me, help me and I will fulfill them; even without help I wish and hope to fulfill them. Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather than the path I follow and which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side! If it is not the right way, then show me another way; but if I stagger and lose the way, you must help me, you must keep me on the true path, just as I am ready to support you. Do not mislead me, do not be glad that I have got lost, do not shout out joyfully: “Look at him! He said he was going home, but there he is crawling into a bog!” No, do not gloat, but give me your help and support. ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#encouragement #hypocrisy #testimony #life

When the late Pope John Paul II decided to place the woman so strangely known as “Mother” Teresa on the fast track for beatification, and thus to qualify her for eventual sainthood, the Vatican felt obliged to solicit my testimony and I thus spent several hours in a closed hearing room with a priest, a deacon, and a monsignor, no doubt making their day as I told off, as from a rosary, the frightful faults and crimes of the departed fanatic. In the course of this, I discovered that the pope during his tenure had surreptitiously abolished the famous office of “Devil’s Advocate,” in order to fast‐track still more of his many candidates for canonization. I can thus claim to be the only living person to have represented the Devil pro bono. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#beatification #canonisation #deacons #devil #devil-s-advocate

Courage is being the only only one who knows how terrified you are. ↗

— Tom Clancy

#testimony #transparency #courage