Quotes about witness
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“It seems to me that life's circumstances, being ephemeral, teach us less about durable truths than the fictions based on those truths; and that the best lessons of delicacy and self-respect are to be found in novels where the feelings are so naturally portrayed that you fancy you are witnessing real life as you read.”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël book Delphine

Delphine (1802), Preface

Life, Truth, Feeling, Nature

“For when the wine is in, the wit is out.”

Thomas Becon (1511–1567) British reformer

Catechism, 375

Wine

“The poor child, as Charles Lamb so touchingly expresses it, is not brought, but "dragged out," and if the wits are sharpened, so, too, is the soft, round cheek. The crippled limb and broken constitution attest the effects of the over-early struggle with penury; but the child of rich parents suffers, though in another way; there is the heart that is crippled, by the selfishness of indulgence and the habit of relying upon others. It takes years of harsh contact with the realities of life to undo the enervating work of a spoilt and over aided childhood. We cannot too soon learn the strong and useful lessons of exertion and self-dependance.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836)

Life, Way, Reality, Parent

“We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2, Ch. 26, sect. 311a
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

Death, Feeling, Success

“Needless to say, the history of the United States has been marred from its inception by an enormous quantity of unjust laws, far too many expressly bolstering the oppression of Black people. Particularized reflections of existing social inequities, these laws have repeatedly borne witness to the exploitative and racist core of the society itself. For Blacks, Chicanos, for all nationally oppressed people, the problem of opposing unjust laws and the social conditions which nourish their growth, has always had immediate practical implications. Our very survival has frequently been a direct function of our skill in forging effective channels of resistance. In resisting, we have sometimes been compelled to openly violate those laws which directly or indirectly buttress our oppression. But even when containing our resistance within the orbit of legality, we have been labeled criminals and have been methodically persecuted by a racist legal apparatus.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

If They Come in The Morning (1971)

People, Law, History, Problem

“A little wit and plenty of authority, that is what has almost always governed the world.”

Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac (1597–1654) French author, best known for his epistolary essays

Un peu d'esprit et beaucoup d'autorité, c'est ce qui a presque toujours gouverné le monde.
Socrate Chrétien, Discours VIII.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 230.
Socrate Chrétien (1662)

World

“I received your favor. In reply I will say concerning the plates, I do say that the angel did show to me the plates containing the Book of Mormon. Further, the translation that I carried to Prof. Anthon was copied from these same plates; also, that the professor did testify to it being a correct translation. I do firmly believe and do know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, for without I know, he could not [have] had that gift, neither could he have translated the same. I can give, if you require it, one hundred witnesses to the proof of the Book of Mormon. I defy any man to show to me any passage of scripture that I am not posted on or familiar with. I will answer any questions you feel like asking to the best of my knowledge, if you can rely on my testimony of the same. In conclusion, I can say that I arrived at Utah safe, in good health and spirits, considering the long journey. I am quite well at present and have been, generally speaking, since I arrived. With many respects, I remain your humble friend.”

Martin Harris (1783–1875) Book of Mormon witness

The True Latter Day Saints’ Herald 22:630, 1875.
Letter written by Harris to the early Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints newspaper after his arrival in Utah . The letter was addressed to “Mr. Emerson, Sir,” and is dated Smithfield, Utah, Nov. 23rd, 1870. (1870)

God, Health, Books, Angels

“In these days he promoted a bramin, by name Seeva Dew Bhut, to the office of prime minister, who embracing the Mahomedan faith, became such a persecutor of Hindoos that he induced Sikundur to issue orders proscribing the residence of any other than Mahomedans in Kashmeer; and he required that no man should wear the mark on his forehead, or any woman be permitted to burn with her husband's corpse. Lastly, he insisted on all golden and silver images being broken and melted down, and the metal coined into money. Many of the bramins, rather than abandon their religion or their country, poisoned themselves; some emigrated from their native homes, while a few escaped the evil of banishment by becoming Mahomedans. After the emigration of the bramins, Sikundur ordered all the temples in Kashmeer to be thrown down; among which was one dedicated to Maha Dew, in the district of Punjhuzara, which they were unable to destroy, in consequence of its foundation being below the surface of the neighbouring water. But the temple dedicated to Jug Dew was levelled with the ground; and on digging into its foundation the earth emitted volumes of fire and smoke which the infidels declared to be the emblem of the wrath of the Deity; but Sikundur, who witnessed the phenomenon, did not desist till the building was entirely razed to the ground, and its foundations dug up….”

Sikandar Butshikan

Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, first published in 1829, New Delhi Reprint 1981, Vol. III p.268-69

Money, Faith, Religion, Home

“Some of us personally witnessed what was done on the continent under that sign and it is a symbol we shall never forget.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Reacting to a youth who had given the Hitler salute; from a speech in Wolverhampton (6 June 1970), quoted in Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (Phoenix, 1999), p. 558.
1970s

Personality, Forgetting

“To witness titanic events is always dangerous, usually painful, and often fatal.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

Source: Ringworld (1970), p. 133

Pain

“He whom we anatomized
‘whose words we gathered as pleasant flowers
and thought on his wit and how neatly he described things’
speaks
to us, hatching marrow,
broody all night over the bones of a deadman.”

Basil Bunting (1900–1985) Poet

from "Villon" (1930)

Flowers, Night

“A man is not primarily a witness against something.”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 5

“Mr. Astaire is the nearest approach we are ever likely to have to a human Mickey Mouse; he might have been drawn by Mr. Walt Disney, with his quick physical wit, his incredible agility. He belongs to a fantasy world almost as free as Mickey's from the law of Gravity.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Graham Greene reviewing Follow the Fleet in The Spectator 1936 and quoted in Thomas, Bob. Astaire, the Man, The Dancer. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1985. ISBN 0297784021 , p. 81.

World, Law

“Consider the problem of taking showers with Christians. They are, after all, constantly going on about the business of witnessing in the hopes of making converts to their God and church. Would you want to shower with such people? You never know when they might try to baptize you.”

Stanley Hauerwas (1940) American theologian

Source: From "Why Gays (as a Group) are Morally Superior to Christians (as a Group)" in The Hauerwas Reader https://www.academia.edu/6641759/Introduction_to_The_Hauerwas_Reader_2001_ (2001) eds. John Berkman and Michael Cartwright

God, People, Hope, Business

“Generally speaking, a witness has no business to concern himself with the merits of the case in which he is called on to give evidence or whether, when given, it will be material to the cause.”

Henry Bickersteth, 1st Baron Langdale (1783–1851) British lawyer

Langley v. Fisher (1843), 5 Beav. 447.
Quote

Business

“I tell you, guilt dwells nowhere but in the eyes of the accuser. This men know even as they deny it, which is why they so often make murder their absolution. The truth of crime lies not with the victim but with the witness.”

R. Scott Bakker book The Thousandfold Thought

HATATIAN, EXHORTATIONS
The Thousandfold Thought (2006)

Men, Truth

“Good wits jump; 45 a word to the wise is enough.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Variant: Good wits jump; 45 a word to the wise is enough.
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 38.

“Enlightenment … asks, innocently and subversively, for proofs, sources, and evidence. At the beginning it solemnly avers that it would willingly believe everything, if only it could find someone to convince it. Here it becomes clear that the biblical texts, taken philologically, remain themselves their only witness. Their revelatory character is their own claim, and it can be believed or not; the church, which elevates this revelatory character to the status of a grand dogma, itself plays only the role of an interpreter. With his radical biblicism, Luther rejected the church’s claim to authority. This repudiation then repeats itself on the higher level through biblicism itself. For text remains text, and every assertion that it is divinely inspired can, in turn, be only a human, fallible assertion. With every attempt to grasp the absolute source, critique comes up against relative, historical sources that only ever assert the Absolute. The miracles spoken about in the Bible to legitimate God’s power are only reports of miracles for which there are no longer any means of verification. The revelatory claim is stuck in a philological circle.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 24

God

“Of course, Charlie and I can identify only a few Inevitables, even after a lifetime of looking for them. Leadership alone provides no certainties: Witness the shocks some years back at General Motors, IBM and Sears, all of which had enjoyed long periods of seeming invincibility. Though some industries or lines of business exhibit characteristics that endow leaders with virtually insurmountable advantages, and that tend to establish Survival of the Fattest as almost a natural law, most do not. Thus, for every Inevitable, there are dozens of Impostors, companies now riding high but vulnerable to competitive attacks.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1996 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1996.html Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Law, Business, Nature

“A genuine taradiddle of the gross and palpable kind never fails for want of vouchers. Hundreds know it to be true—hundreds more were all but eye-witnesses of the fact related—some actually were; all can attest it on their personal responsibility. Upon that point everybody has a reputation for veracity to stake—though the same stake had been forfeited fifty times; and everybody can contribute to the original story an unquestionable incident of his own coinage "to make assurance doubly sure." So it goes round, until the first projector hardly recognizes his own lie; and ends by believing ten times more absurdity than he had palmed upon others.”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"That what Everybody Says must be True".
Sketches from Life (1846)

Lie, Time, Personality

“But the knowledge of the library is not that of the world; a youth of solitude is bad preparation for a manhood of action; from the earliest age we need to mingle with our kind; the child corrects and instructs the child more than their masters; our equals are the tools wherewith experience works out its lessons; and the play-ground, with its rival interests, its injustices, its necessity for the ready wit and the curbed temper is both miniature and prophesy of the world, which will but bring back the old struggles only with a sterner aspect, and the same successes, but with more than half their enjoyment departed.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Other Gift Books

Youth, Age, World, Knowledge

“At the height of the sectarian bloodletting in 2006, 2007, there were over four million refugees, roughly half of them in the country, half of them who had fled the country, largely to Syria and to Jordan. To this day, according to official areas, seeking refuge. So, they’re not getting really any help whatsoever from the government. They’re living in horrible situations. And it was really a poignant thing to witness, Amy, because despite these people living in really difficult conditions, oftentimes living amongst giant piles of garbage, you walk in, and as per Iraqi Arab custom, you’re offered a drink, although even in so many of these cases people only had literally a glass of water that they could—they could offer you, despite the fact that they’re living with no government assistance and help, and basically no hope for a future, of “Where are we going to go from here? How is the situation in any way going to improve for us?” when things look so bleak, with a government in gridlock, and it looking like we’re poised for another massive increase in sectarian violence.”

Dahr Jamail (1968) American journalist

When things look so bleak, with a government in gridlock, and it looking like we’re poised for another massive increase in sectarian violence. Ten Years Later, U.S. Has Left Iraq with Mass Displacement & Epidemic of Birth Defects, Cancers https://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/20/ten_years_later_us_has_left (March 20, 2013), '.

Country, Hope, People, Drink

“Witches have no wit, said the magician who was weak. Hula, hula, said the witches.”

Norman Mailer book An American Dream

Stephen Rojack, in Ch. 4
An American Dream (1965)

“A black friend of morbid wit said to me, ‘Doesn't O. J. know that we can f*** 'em now but we still can't kill 'em?’...”

Carl Rowan (1925–2000) American journalist

Quoington Star article entitled "Has President Nixon Gone Crazy?", "The Coming Race War in America: A Wake-up Call" (1996)

“I first saw Wittgenstein in the Michaelmas term of 1938, my first term at Cambridge. At a meeting of the Moral Science Club, after the paper for the evening was read and the discussion started, someone began to stammer a remark. He had extreme difficulty in expressing himself and his words were unintelligible to me. I whispered to my neighbour, ‘Who is that?’: he replied, ‘Wittgenstein.’ I was astonished, because, for one reason I had expected the famous author of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to be an elderly man, whereas this man looked young—perhaps about 35. (His actual age was 49.) His face was lean and brown, his profile was aquiline and strikingly beautiful, his head was covered with a curly mass of brown hair. I observed the respectful attention that everyone in the room paid to him. After his unsuccessful beginning he did not speak for a time but was obviously struggling with his thoughts. His look was concentrated, he made striking gestures with his hands as if he were discoursing. All the others maintained an intent and expectant silence. I witnessed this phenomenon count less times thereafter and came to regard it as entirely natural.”

Norman Malcolm (1911–1990) American philosopher

Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 1958

Age, Beauty, Nature, Silence

“We who have inherited this Empire are proud of it, and it is right that we should be proud. With our pride there should mingle gratitude to those who have gone before us, by whose efforts this Empire has grown. In a world still suffering from the shock of war, the British Empire stands firm as a great force for good…It stands in the sweep of every wind, by the wash of every sea, a witness to that which the spirit of confidence and brotherhood can accomplish in the world.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast from 10 Downing Street, London (24 May 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 63.
1927

War, World, Confidence, Effort

“We must foster in us the awareness that the actual laws are, on the whole, something limited and that there is always need of integration and correction, and this attention to possible changes must be kept especially in regard to more important things. Citizens often use the opposite method: they disobey the small laws, and they obey the important ones. They have not widened their spirit to look above all at these last ones, which at times are unjust impositions. Then disobedience to these becomes a witness.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

‘In Remembrance of Aldo Capitini’
Hymn

Law, Change, Time

“History is truly the witness of times past, the light of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life, the messenger of antiquity; whose voice, but the orator's, can entrust her to immortality?”
Historia vero testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita memoriae, magistra vitae, nuntia vetustatis, qua voce alia nisi oratoris immortalitati commendatur?

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

De Oratore Book II; Chapter IX, section 36

Life, Truth, History, Light

“If I tried to imagine the public as a particular person (for although some better individuals momentarily belong to the public they nevertheless have something concrete about them, which holds them in its grip even if they have not attained the supreme religious attitude), I should perhaps think of one of the Roman emperors, a large well-fed figure, suffering from boredom, looking only for the sensual intoxication of laughter, since the divine gift of wit is not earthly enough. And so for a change he wanders about, indolent rather than bad, but with a negative desire to dominate. Every one who has read the classical authors knows how many things a Caesar could try out in order to kill time. In the same way the public keeps a dog to amuse it. That dog is the sum of the literary world. If there is some one superior to the rest, perhaps even a great man, the dog is set on him and the fun begins. The dog goes for him, snapping and tearing at his coat-tails, allowing itself every possible ill-mannered familiarity – until the public tires, and says it may stop. That is an example of how the public levels. Their betters and superiors in strength are mishandled – and the dog remains a dog which even the public despises. The leveling is therefore done by a third party; a non-existent public leveling with the help of a third party which in its significance is less than nothing, being already more than leveled.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

The Present Age 1846 by Søren Kierkegaard, translated by Alexander Dru 1962, p. 65-66
1840s, Two Ages: A Literary Review (1846)

World, Dogs, Way, Imagination

“The supreme trial of the Constitution came at last under the tremendous pressure of civil war. We ourselves are witnesses that the Union emerged from the blood and fire of that conflict purified and made stronger for all the beneficent purposes of good government.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Inaugural address (1881)

War

““They did not like to retain God in their knowledge” (Rom. i. 28), and though they could not extinguish “the Light that lighteth every man,” and which “shone in the darkness;” yet because the darkness could not comprehend the Light, they refused to bear witness of it, and worshipped, instead, the shaping mist, which the Light had drawn upward from the ground (i. e., from the mere animal nature and instinct), and which that Light alone had made visible”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

i.e., by super-inducing on the animal instinct the principle of self-consciousness
Aids to Reflection (1873), footnote to Aphorism 106 part 13

God, Nature, Knowledge, Light

“This is a history, in that it intends to describe what happened and suggest why. … I may have fooled around with a few facts. But I served as witness until as close to the end as anyone could have … and so there is not so much art in this as to make it irrelevant.”

Neal Stephenson book The Big U

Early schema for author's now-familiar approach to historic events and persons; "The Go Big Red Fan" (prologue)
The Big U (1984)

Fools, Art, History

“Money is the great weapon in a free, equal and competitive society, which skill and capital employ in the war of the wits, to exploitate and oppress the poor, the improvident, and the weak-minded. Its evil effects are greatly aggravated by the credit and banking systems.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 303

Money, War, Evil

“This consideration must alter the form of our proposed inquiry; for the question being thus at least partly decided, since it is ascertained that we have rays of heat which give no light, it can only become a subject of inquiry whether some of these heat-making rays may not have a power of rendering objects visible, superadded to their now already established power of heating bodies. This being the case, it is evident that the onus probandi [burden of proof] ought to lie with those who are willing to establish such an hypothesis, for it does not appear that Nature is in the habit of using one and the same mechanism with any two of our senses. Witness the vibration of air that makes sound, the effluvia that occasion smells, the particles that produce taste, the resistance or repulsive powers that affect the touch—all these are evidently suited to their respective organs of sense.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works" on his discovery of the infrared.

Lie, Question, Nature, Sense

“The truth is that it is a culture of dependency as promulgated by the race-baiters and new plantation overseers of the inner city that has created what we’re seeing play out in Baltimore. There is where the blame lies, but there are very few who are willing to admit just that. Remember what ESPN sports commentator Stephen A. Smith said? He wished that for one voting cycle, the black community would vote Republican. Heck, they could do no worse — and look, even the people of the State of Maryland decided to try something different and elected a Republican governor. Who, when finally asked, immediately activated the National Guard to quell the violence and chaos which the Democrat Mayor of Baltimore failed to comprehend, and control. Perhaps what we’re witnessing in Baltimore is the pure definition of insanity — continuing to do the same thing and expect different results.”

Allen West (politician) (1961) American politician; retired United States Army officer

2010s, Dirty little secret no one wants to admit about Baltimore (2015)

People, Truth, Communication, Sport

“Self-awareness and self-consciousness are entirely different. When I am “self-conscious,” it is really someone else’s eyes that are watching, judging, and criticizing me. … It is these eyes that must be put out if I am to make sense of and remain in touch with my true self. And when we fail to find symbolic ways of destroying the watchers by becoming our own true witness, then the parents or authorities are sometimes literally killed.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 136

Way, Parent, Sense

“At bottom, knowledge of God in faith is always this indirect knowledge of God, knowledge of God in His works, and in these particular works in the determining and using of certain creaturely realities to bear witness to the divine objectivity. What distinguishes faith from unbelief, erroneous faith and superstition is that it is content with this indirect knowledge of God.”

Karl Barth book Church Dogmatics

2:1
Church Dogmatics (1932–1968)

God, Faith, Knowledge, Reality

“Let each man have the wit to go his own way.”
Unus quisque sua noverit ire via.

Propertius (-47–-16 BC) Latin elegiac poet

II, xxv, 38.
Elegies

Way

“The time has come for me to say good-bye-or better, 'arrivederci!'. World Youth Day 2011 will take place in Madrid, Spain. Until then, let us continue to pray for one another, and let us joyfully bear witness to Christ before the world.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2008, Angelus following the Closing Mass (19 July 2008)

Youth, World, Time, Christ

“An elegant writer has observed, that wit may do very well for a mistress, but that he should prefer reason for a wife.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Vol. I; LXXI
Lacon (1820)

“An authorship that began with Either/Or and advanced step by step seeks here its decisive place of rest, at the foot of the altar, where the author, personally most aware of his own imperfections and guilt, certainly does not call himself a truth-witness but only a singular kind of poet and thinker who, without authority, has had nothing new to bring but “has wanted once again to read through, if possible in a more inward way, the original text handed down from the fathers” Preface P. 165”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

1850s, Two Discourses at Friday Communion (August 1851)

Truth, Way, Decision, Reading

“Not only must people know, they must see with their own eyes. Because they must be made to be afraid; but also because they must be the witnesses, the guarantors, of the punishment, and because they must to a certain extent take part in it.”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Source: Discipline and Punish (1977), Chapter One, pp.58

People, Parting

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Tear

“A depressing number of people seem to process everything literally. They are to wit as a blind man is to a forest, able to find every tree, but each one coming as a surprise.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

First published in the "Movie Answer Man" column (18 September 2005) http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050918/ANSWERMAN/509180304/1023

People, Tree

“Present party designations have become empty of all contents…Vastly extended State expenditure, vastly increased demands from the taxpayer who has to provide the money, social reform regardless of expense, cash exacted from the taxpayer already at his wits' end—when were the problems of plus and minus more desperate? How are we to measure the use and abuse of industrial organization? Powerful orators find "Liberty" the true keyword, but the I remember hearing from a learned student that of "liberty" he knew well over two hundred definitions. Can we be sure that the "haves" and the "have-nots" will agree in their selection of the right one? We can only trust to the growth of responsibility; we may look to circumstances and events to teach their lesson.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Letter to Sir Francis Webster, president of the Montrose Burghs Liberal Association, quoted in 'Lord Morley On Modern Politics', The Times (11 May 1923), p. 12.

Money, Problem, Learning

“The stem cell debate was an introduction to a phenomenon I witnessed throughout my presidency: highly personal criticism. Partisan opponents and commentators questioned my legitimacy, my intelligence, and my sincerity. They mocked my appearance, my accent, and my religious beliefs. I was labeled a Nazi, a war criminal, and Satan himself. That last one came from a foreign leader, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. One lawmaker called me both a loser and a liar. He became majority leader of the U. S. Senate. In some ways, I wasn't surprised. I had endured plenty of rough politics in Texas. I had seen Dad and Bill Clinton derided by their opponents and the media. Abraham Lincoln was compared to a baboon. Even George Washington became so unpopular that political cartoons showed the hero of the American revolution being marched to the guillotine. Yet the death spiral of decency during my time in office, exacerbated by the advent of twenty-four-hour cable news and hyper-partisan political blogs, was deeply disappointing. The toxic atmosphere in American politics discourages good people from running for office.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Source: 2010s, 2010, Decision Points (November 2010), p. 121

Death, War, People, Disappointment

“It has often been matter of regret in modern times that, in the construction of the Statute of Limitations, the decisions had not proceeded upon principles better adapted to carry into effect the real objects of the Statute; that instead of being viewed in an unfavourable light as an unjust and discreditable defence, it had not received such support as would have made it what it was intended to be, emphatically a Statute of repose. It is a wise and beneficial law, not designed merely to raise a presumption of payment of a just debt from lapse of time, but to afford security against stale demands after the true state of the transaction may be forgotten, or be incapable of explanation by reason of the death or removal of witnesses.”

Joseph Story (1779–1845) US Supreme Court justice

Bell v. Morrison, 1 Peters, Sup. C. Rep. (U. S.) 360 (1828).

Death, Law, Support, Decision

“So, ungentle reader, (as you and I value what we should ashamed—after witnessing a few minor circus-marvels—to call our "lives,") let us never be fooled into taking seriously that perfectly superficial distinction which is vulgarly drawn between the circus-show and "art" or "the arts." Let us not forget that every authentic "work of art" is in and of itself alive and that, however "the arts" may differ among themselves, their common function is the expression of that supreme alive-ness which is known as "beauty." This being so, our three ring circus is art—for to contend that the spectacle in question is not an authentic manifestation of "beauty" is as childish, as to dismiss the circus on the ground that it is "childish," is idiotic.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

"The Adult, the Artist and the Circus." Vanity Fair (October 1925)

Beauty, Fools, Art, Question

“The hopelessness of the Turkish Government should make me witness with delight its being swept out of the countries which it tortures. Next to the Ottoman Government nothing can be more deplorable and blameworthy than jealousies between Greek and Slav and plans by the States already existing for appropriating other territory. Why not Macedonia for the Macedonians as well as Bulgaria for the Bulgarians and Serbia for the Serbians?”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Letter quoted in Mr. Gladstone and The Balkan Confederation in The Times (6 February 1897)
1890s

Jealousy, Country

“Is the Minister aware that many people regard the present system of juryless trials at the Crumlin road court as outrageous? It would be appropriate for him to pay a visit to see the way in which trials take place, with no jury, where the decision is made solely on the word of a supergrass witness who stands to benefit from giving evidence, and where only the judge makes the decision. How much money has been paid in the last four years to supergrass witnesses for their evidence in such circumstances?”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Question http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1985/jun/13/crumlin-road-court-trial in the House of Commons (13 June 1985). 1980s

Money, People, Way, Decision

“It is not unreasonable nor derogatory to the attributes of Omnipotence, to imagine that some general laws may be observed in the creation of new worlds; and if man could witness the birth of such worlds, he might reason by induction upon the origin of his own. But in the absence of such data, an attempt has been made to fancy some analogy between the agents now employed to destroy, renovate, and perpetually vary the earth's surface, and those whereby the first chaotic mass was formed, and brought by supposed nascent energy from the embryo to the habitable state.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.2, p. 13
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

World, Law, Imagination, Birth

“In America, enslaved Africans learned the story of the exodus from Egypt and set their own hearts on a promised land of freedom. Enslaved Africans discovered a suffering savior and found he was more like themselves than their masters. Enslaved Africans heard the ringing promises of the Declaration of Independence and asked the self-evident question, 'Then why not me?' In the era of America's founding, a man named Olaudah Equiano was taken in bondage to the New World. He witnessed all of slavery's cruelties, the ruthless and the petty. He also saw beyond the slave-holding piety of a time to a higher standard of humanity.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Hope and Conscience Will Not Be Silenced (July 2003)

World, Question, Freedom, Suffering

“If you had paid any attention, instead of just scanning for places you can display your sparkling wit, you might have noticed that I use this forum in much the same way firemen use fire to fight fire. But, since you ask, I can shut it down for you.”

John Byrne (1950) American author and artist of comic books

2007
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=19499&PN=0&TPN=1
When asked if he had considered closing his forum, since it was part of the Internet fandom “problem”

Way, Fight

“Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love. In a modern economy it is impossible to seal oneself off from injustice. If we have brains or courage, then we are blessed and called on not to frit these qualities away, standing agape at the ideas of others, winning pissing contests, improving the efficiencies of the neocorporate state, or immersing ourselves in obscuranta, but rather to prove the vigor of our talents against the strongest opponents of love we can find. If we can only live once, then let it be a daring adventure that draws on all our powers. Let it be with similar types whos hearts and heads we may be proud of. Let our grandchildren delight to find the start of our stories in their ears but the endings all around in their wandering eyes. The whole universe or the structure that perceives it is a worthy opponent, but try as I may I can not escape the sound of suffering. Perhaps as an old man I will take great comfort in pottering around in a lab and gently talking to students in the summer evening and will accept suffering with insouciance. But not now; men in their prime, if they have convictions are tasked to act on them.”

Julian Assange (1971) Australian editor, activist, publisher and journalist

[Witnessing, 2007-01-03, 2012-08-16, http://web.archive.org/web/20071020051936/http://iq.org/#Witnessing]

Love, Men, Idea, Courage

“Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
I've witnessed your suffering
As the battles raged higher
And though they hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms.”

Mark Knopfler (1949) English guitarist

Brothers in Arms
Song lyrics, Brothers in Arms (1985)

Fear, Suffering, Rage, Hurt

“Cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men in the same manner as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity for wisdom.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 225.
The Tatler (1711–1714)

Wisdom, Men

“Those who want the country to have a strong and sure defence can't rely on the Labour Party, the SDP or the Liberals. They can rely on us. By the end of this century it is predicted that several more countries will have acquired nuclear weapons. Labour wants Britain to give them up. At the very time when any sensible person would be renewing his insurance cover, Labour wants to cancel Britain's policy altogether. Moreover, they want to get rid of American bases from Britain and all nuclear weapons from British soil. Does anyone who has witnessed Mr. Gorbachev's performance thinks that he respects weakness? No. Mr. President, it is recognition of the West's strength and cohesion that has brought the Soviet Union back to the negotiating table. Our wish is to see substantial reductions in nuclear weapons, provided they are balanced and verifiable. I know that will be President Reagan's objective at his meeting with Mr Gorbachev, and he has our full support and good wishes as he goes to Geneva. The West could not have a better or a braver champion.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (11 October 1985) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106145 Second term as Prime Minister

Support, Thinking, Strong, Time

“Only let us love God, and then nature will compass us about like a cloud of Divine witnesses; and all influences from the earth, and things on the earth, will be ministers of God to do us good. Only let there be God within us, and then every thing outside us will become a godlike help.”

William Mountford (1816–1885) English Unitarian preacher and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 430.

Love, God, Nature, Help

“Hands in his pockets he began to walk aimlessly down the sidewalk runnel. And, each minute, feeling more and more scared and desperate. Everything was falling apart around him. And he seemed helpless to halt the collapse; he could only witness it, completely impotent, snatched up and gripped by processes too powerful for him to understand.”

Philip K. Dick book Clans of the Alphane Moon

Source: Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964), Chapter 9 (p. 139)

Feeling, Understanding

“You — yourself — said on many occasions, one of them in the UN General Assembly, I was witness to that personally, that America is not responsible for the security of other peoples. That America helps only. This is the right logic.”

Muammar Gaddafi book The Green Book

The Green Book (1975), Letter to Barack Obama

People, Help, Personality

“Tis not Wit merely, but a Temper which must form the Well-Bred Man. In the same manner, 'tis not a Head merely, but a Heart and Resolution which must compleat the real Philosopher.”

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) English politician and Earl

Vol. 2, p. 206; "Miscellany III".
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711)

Heart

“A colossal orange moon rolls as an unbelievable ball against intense blue. The silhouettes of the houses flank this blue on both sides, forming a childishly rigid little frame. As if we witness the birth of the song of flowers which are subordinated to this blue and dominated by the orange moon.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

she wrote in 1905
1895 - 1905
Source: Lettres a un Inconnu, (Notebook III, p. 120) - Aux sources de l'expressionnisme. Presentation par Gabrielle Dufour-Kowalska. Klincksieck, 1999. p. 156

Flowers, Birth, Housing

“Don't judge me from my looks or the way I dress, judge me wit what I do, cuz I don't impress people!!”

Slim Burna (1988) Nigerian singer and record producer

Slim Burna on his Twitter http://twitter.com/slimburna1/status/377151400725467136, @Slimburna1 (September 9th, 2013)

People, Way

“Metaphor… is, as a common feature of linguistic practice, an incidental expediency, a homely administering of first-aid by mother-wit to jams or halts in expression suddenly confronting speakers, with no respectable linguistic solution immediately in sight.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

"The Matter of Metaphor" in Rational Meaning and Supplementary Essays (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997).

Home

“Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one's wit at the expense of one's better nature.”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

La raillerie est un discours en faveur de son esprit contre son bon naturel.
Pensées Diverses

Nature

“All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinations of the understanding are not right; because they have a reference to something beyond themselves, to wit, real matter of fact; and are not always conformable to that standard.”

David Hume book Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Part I, Essay 23: Of The Standard of Taste
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)

Understanding

“I hold a mouses wit not worth a leke,
That hath but on hole for to sterten to.”

Geoffrey Chaucer book The Canterbury Tales

The Wife of Bath's Tale, l. 6154
The Canterbury Tales

“The promise I made when I went to Ferguson and at the time that we launched our investigation was not that we would arrive at a particular outcome, but rather that we would pursue the facts, wherever they led. Our investigation has been both fair and rigorous from the start. It has proceeded independently of the local investigation that concluded in November. And it has been thorough: as part of a wide-ranging examination of the evidence, federal investigators interviewed and re-interviewed eyewitnesses and other individuals claiming to have relevant information and independently canvassed more than 300 residences to locate and interview additional witnesses.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)

Time, Parting

“Every age has its pleasures, its style of wit, and its own ways.”

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711) French poet and critic

Chaque âge a ses plaisirs, son esprit et ses mœurs.
Canto III, l. 374
The Art of Poetry (1674)

Pleasure, Age, Way

“I grew up in war-torn Iraq, and I believe that there are two sides of wars and we've only seen one side of it. We only talk about one side of it. But there's another side that I have witnessed as someone who lived in it and someone who ended up working in it.”

Zainab Salbi (1969) Iraqi American author, women's rights activist

Speech at TEDGlobal 2010

War

“Mr. McCarthy, I will not discuss this further with you. You have sat within six feet of me and could have asked me about Fred Fisher. You have seen fit to bring it out. And if there is a God in Heaven it will do neither you nor your cause any good. I will not discuss it further. I will not ask Mr. Cohn any more questions. You, Mr. Chairman, may, if you will, call the next witness.”

Joseph N. Welch (1890–1960) American lawyer

As cited in: Thomas Doherty, ‎Thomas Patrick Doherty (2013) Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture. p. 207
Army–McCarthy hearings (9 June 1954)

God, Question

“Nobody knew what the Company wanted. Various witnesses assigned motives according to their own fears. Few came anywhere near the mark.”

Glen Cook book Shadows Linger

Source: Shadows Linger (1984), Chapter 33, “Juniper: The Encounter” (p. 368)

Fear, Motivation

“Though the theology of Christianity had thus sunk to the lowly estate of a mere delusion of the rabble, propagated on that level by the ancient caste of sacerdotal parasites, the ethics of Christianity continued to enjoy the utmost acceptance, and perhaps even more acceptance than ever before. It seemed to be generally felt, in fact, that they simply must be saved from the wreck—that the world would vanish into chaos if they went the way of the revelations supporting them. In this fear a great many judicious men joined, and so there arose what was, in essence, an absolutely new Christian cult—a cult, to wit, purged of all the supernaturalism superimposed upon the older cult by generations of theologians, and harking back to what was conceived to be the pure ethical doctrine of Jesus.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1940s–present, Introduction to Nietzsche's The Antichrist

Men, World, Fear, Way

“The realities of globalization can be seen in something as simple as the investigation of a car crash. If a patrolman investigated a fatal accident in the 1970s, the victims and the witnesses were both likely from the local community; and if the officer climbed into the wreckage, to look for some malfunction in the vehicle, he would probably see from the serial numbers that the car was made in the U. S. He could put all that together, and make his case. But Consider the death of Princess Diana. This accident involved an English citizen, with an Egyptian boyfriend, crashed in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian, who was drunk on Scotch whiskey, followed closely by Italian paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles, and finally treated with Brazilian medicines by an American doctor. In this case, even leaving aside the fame of the victims, a mere neighborhood canvass would hardly have completed the forensic picture, as it might have a generation before.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

The New Paradigm: Merging Law Enforcement and Intelligence Strategies (2006)

Death, Cars, Communication, Reality

“Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence. The engine of consolidation will be the Federal judiciary; the two other branches the corrupting and corrupted instruments.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter, Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1821: ME 15-341, as quoted in The Assault on Reason, Al Gore, A&C Black (2012, reprint), p. 87 : ISBN 1408835800, 9781408835807, and Federal Jurisdiction, Form #05.018, Sovereignty Education and Defense Ministry (2012)
1820s

Country

“His wit invites you by his looks to come,
But when you knock it never is at home.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

Source: Conversation (1782), Line 303.

Home

“Man is about to be an automaton; he is identifiable only in the computer. As a person of worth and creativity, as a being with an infinite potential, he retreats and battles the forces that make him inhuman.
The dissent we witness is a reaffirmation of faith in man; it is protest against living under rules and prejudices and attitudes that produce the extremes of wealth and poverty and that make us dedicated to the destruction of people through arms, bombs, and gases, and that prepare us to think alike and be submissive objects for the regime of the computer.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Points of Rebellion (1970), p. 32–33
Other speeches and writings

People, Faith, Thinking, Personality

“Tell a dream, lose a reader, said Henry James. Joyce told a dream, Finnegans Wake, and he told it in puns - cornily but rightly regarded as the lowest form of wit. This showed fantastic courage, and fantastic introversion. The truth is Joyce didn't love the reader, as you need to do. Well, he gave us Ulysses, incontestably the central modernist masterpiece; it is impossible to conceive of any future novel that might give the form such a violent evolutionary lurch. You can't help wondering, though. Joyce could have been the most popular boy in school, the funniest, the cleverest, the kindest. He ended with a more ambiguous distinction: he became the teacher's pet.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Review of Ulysses, p. 446
The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (2001)

Love, Truth, School, Dreams

“I've come to the end of von Hügel's voluminous work on Catherine of Genoa. For such outlay in erudition, it's basically an unrewarding book (for me!), but full of interesting side-lights…Curious, for instance, that Catherine, always universally cited as the recognised authority, the most important and competent witness to the nature of Purgatory, should actually never have had a vision of it - neither as shewing nor as visiting in spirit, as other mystics did.. Her statements are pure conclusions, analogies, based on her own spiritual experiences of suffering and bliss: "So that's what it must be like in Purgatory!"”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Diaries 1955-57.

Books, Nature, Light, Suffering

“Once again, the world is faced with a transcendent conflict between those who love life and those who love death both for themselves and their enemies. Which is why we tremble. Upon witnessing the first atomic bomb explode at the Trinity site at Alamogordo, J. Robert Oppenheimer recited a verse from the Hindu scripture "Bhagavad Gita": "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." We tremble because for the first time in history, nihilism will soon be armed with the ultimate weapons of annihilation. For the first time in history, the nihilist will have the means to match his ends. Which is why the war declared upon us on September 11 is the most urgent not only of our lives, but in the life of civilization itself.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

2000s, 2001, The Enemy is not Islam. It is Nihilism (2001)

Love, Life, Death, War

“The beginning of the twentieth century witnessed the breakdown of the mechanistic theory even within physics, the science where it was the most successful… Relativity took over in field physics, and the science of quantum theory in microphysics… In view of parallel developments in physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, and economics, many branches of the contemporary sciences became… ‘sciences of organized complexity’ — that is, systems sciences.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: The systems view of the world (1996), p. 8 as cited in: Martha C. Beck (2013) "Contemporary Systems Sciences, Implications for the Nature and Value of Religion, the Five Principles of Pancasila, and the Five Pillars of Islam," Dialogue and Universalism-E Volume 4, Number 1/2013. p. 3 ( online http://www.emporia.edu/~cbrown/dnue/documents/vol04.no01.2013/Vol04.01.Beck.pdf).

Science, Success

“Battlefield Earth is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way. The visuals are grubby and drab. The characters are unkempt and have rotten teeth. Breathing tubes hang from their noses like ropes of snot. The soundtrack sounds like the boom mike is being slammed against the inside of a 55-gallon drum. The plot. … Some movies run off the rails. This one is like the train crash in The Fugitive. I watched it in mounting gloom, realizing I was witnessing something historic, a film that for decades to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad movies.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/battlefield-earth-2000 of Battlefield Earth (12 May 2000) Reviews, Half-star reviews

Hostility, Way, Time, Training

“Dialogue in Hell:
First Dialogue

Machiavelli:…I am less preoccupied by what is good and moral than by what is useful and necessary.
…I will tell you that, as a witness in my homeland of the fickleness and the cowardice of the populace, of its innate taste for slavery, of its incapacity to conceive and to respect the conditions of free life; it is to my eyes a blind force which dissolves itself sooner or later, if it is not in the hands of a single man that it would never be able to administer, nor to judge, nor to make war….”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Life, War, Hell

“This vast land which Islam has dismembered in due course into the separate states of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Hindustan, and Bangladesh had been a single indivisible whole since times immemorial. Bharatavarsha had been termed by the ancients as the cradle of varNãšrama-dharma, witness to the wheel of the caturyugas, and the kShetra for chakravãrtya, spiritual as well as political. This historical memory and cultural tradition was alive as late as the imperial Guptas. Kalidasa had clothed it in immortal poetry in his far-famed RaghuvaMša.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

Memory, Time, Clothes

“The built house seems all so fit,- everyway as it should be, as if it came there by its own law and the nature of things,- we forget the rude disorderly quarry it was shaped from. The very perfection of the house, as if Nature herself had made it, hides the builder's merit. Perfect, more perfect than any other man, we may call Shakspeare in this: he discerns, knows as by instinct, what condition he works under, what his materials are, what his own force and its relation to them is. It is not a transitory glance of insight that will suffice; it is deliberate illumination of the whole matter; it is a calmly seeing eye; a great intellect, in short. How a man, of some wide thing that he has witnessed, will construct a narrative, what kind of picture and delineation he will give of it,- is the best measure you could get of what intellect is in the man. Which circumstance is vital and shall stand prominent; which unessential, fit to be suppressed; where is the true beginning, the true sequence and ending? To find out this, you task the whole force of insight that is in the man. He must understand the thing; according to the depth of his understanding, will the fitness of his answer be.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet

Law, Understanding, Nature, Housing

“Making this crowd happy is the second easiest job you could ever have. First easiest… whoever gets to put Michael Jackson in a witness chair and create "reasonable doubt." How hard can that be? I don't even have a law degree and I think I could get Michael Jackson, y'know? I would just go, "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury… there he is! That's all I have. Y'all get a good look at my boy? See if you think he's capable of anything out of the ordinary. There he is." But it's a tough thing to prosecute Michael Jackson, y'know? Because everyone's entitled to a jury of their peers! You could run the vacuum up and down the gene pool 24/7 without suckin' up this much of whatever that has become. He has no peers. He's peerless. So why am I pickin' on poor little mutated Michael Jackson? Because Michael Jackson is a cautionary tale for the rest of us, folks. Michael Jackson is what happens when you keep fixin' it until it's broke!”

Richard Jeni (1957–2007) American comedian

A Big, Steaming Pile Of Me

Law, Boy, Thinking, Happiness

“The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people — that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

Television interview with Edward R. Murrow on TV show Small World, CBS-TV (25 March 1959); transcript published in New York Post
Letters and interviews

People, World, Nature, Personality

“I never had a strategy in my dealing with other humans! I've always been very passive socially. I went along with their agenda. I had none of my own! Left to my own devices I stayed in my room or wandered aimlessly in the streets, fantasizing about bizarre things I yearned to do to big ladies, or filled with self-pity and resentment. I was helpless in the presence of other people! My main concern was to make them like me by being as agreeable as possible, and secondly to impress them with my brilliance, my sharp wit, my originality, and my fundamental saintliness. Over time, and after years—decades—of diligent practice, I became very good at this cute little performance of mine. But this performance was improvised in the moment, catered to suit whoever I happened to be with. There was no strategy. It was always an effort. Only in solitude was I completely relaxed. Funny thing…”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

From his sketchbook (16 February 1998), reproduced in The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 380

People, Solitude, Effort, Time

“So many heads so many wits.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Part I, chapter 3.
Proverbs (1546)

“I will not say that a witness shall not be asked to what may tend to disparage him: that would prevent an investigation into the character of the witness, which may often be of importance to ascertain. I think those questions only should not be allowed to be asked which have a direct and immediate effect to disgrace or disparage the witness.”

Richard Arden, 1st Baron Alvanley (1744–1804) British judge and politician

Macbride v. Macbride (1805), 4 Esp. 242.

Question, Thinking

“Excellent; all is well. The 'everlasting tedium' exactly countervenes the 'immediate onset of death' and I am left only with the 'canker' which, in the person of Firx, already afflicts me. One must use his wits in dealing with maledictions.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Chapter 2, "Cil"

Death, Affliction, Personality

“The Hellenistic world was international to a degree, polyglot and inspired by many religious faiths. …the Greek ideals were pagan and the Hellenistic age witnessed their death struggle against Asiatic and Egyptian mysteries, on the one side, and against Judaism, on the other.”

George Sarton (1884–1956) American historian of science

Preface.
A History of Science Vol.2 Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C. (1959)

Death, Age, World, Faith

““Scholars of Paderevski Foundation who were fortunate enough to have witnessed the fragments of Swapnavāsavadattam as performed by your splendid actors, were unanimous in their praise of the high cultural and aesthetic level of the Koodiyattam. It was a most enjoyable experience and the Paderevski Founadtion is proud to have co-sponsored the appearances of the Theatre in Northern India”
- Paderewski Foundation (New York) Certificate (New Delhi, 1964) - First International recognition for Kutiyattam and the maestro.”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Awards

Appearance

“It is in this matter that I fall foul of so many American writers on writing; they seem to think that writing is a confidence game by means of which the author cajoles a restless, dull-witted, shallow audience into hearing his point of view. Such an attitude is base, and can only beget base prose.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Elements of Style (1959).

Confidence, Game, Thinking

“The Quaestor turned back the pages until he found himself among the Pensées. “We are not satisfied,” he read, “with the life we have in ourselves and our own being; we want to live an imaginary life in other people’s idea of us. Hence all our efforts are directed to seeming what we are not. We labor incessantly to preserve and embellish this imaginary being, and neglect that which is really ours.” The Quaestor put down the book, … and ruefully reflected that all his own troubles had arisen from this desire to seem what in fact he was not. To seem a man of action, when in fact he was a contemplative; to seem a politician, when nature had made him an introspective psychologist; to seem a wit, which God had intended him for a sage.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“Variations on a Philosopher” in Themes and Variations (1943), p. 2

Life, God, People, Books

“The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish: it is love and praise for the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Source: Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989), Ch. 6

Love, World, Light, Selfishness

“Your participation of the holy communion must be regarded as the fresh act of your espousals, as the solemn renewal of your covenant; as your surrender, entire and unhesitating, to the service of the Lord. It is thus that you confess Christ, and witness of Him to the world. If you eat and drink without discerning this great purpose, you eat and drink unworthily; if you repudiate such purpose, either in thought or act, you crucify in your measure the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame. By your profane use of the means of grace without the slightest desire for the grace of the means, it is as if you cut and wounded the Saviour in this the house of His friends, and sharpened the daggers of your treachery upon the tables of the violated law.”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 374.

God, World, Law, Drink

“And new philosophy calls all in doubt,
The element of fire is quite put out;
The sun is lost, and the earth, and no man's wit,
Can well direct him where to look for it.
And freely men confess that this world's spent,
When in the planets, and the firmament
They seek so many new; then see that this
Is crumbled out again to his atomies.
'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone;
All just supply, and all relation:
Prince, subject, Father, Son, are things forgot.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

An Anatomy of the World, The First Anniversary

Men, World, Sun

“From the day I was born, there has always existed a huge disconnect between the stories often told by the elite and those I hear from ordinary people about our country although we live in the places; and witness the same events around us.”

Morgan Tsvangirai (1952–2018) former Prime Minister of Zimbabwe

Remarks at the launch of his book – At the Deep End http://www.zimeye.org/?p=41996&cpage=1

People, Country

“My song shall spread where ever there are men,
If wit and art will so much guide my pen.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Cantando espalharei por toda parte,
Se a tanto me ajudar o engenho e arte.

Stanza 2, lines 7–8 (tr. Richard Fanshawe, 1655)
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto I

Men, Art

Quotes about witness page 8

Quotes about witness
page 8