Popular quotes about Innocence! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection," and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.
John AdamsIf I could, Sister James, I would certainly choose to live in innocence. But innocence can only be wisdom in a world without evil. Situations arise and we are confronted with wrongdoing and the need to act.
John Patrick ShanleySlave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or the taste of the superhuman, cripple judgment. On the day when crime puts on the apparel of innocence, through a curious reversal peculiar to our age, it is innocence that is called on to justify itself. The purpose of this essay is to accept and study that strange challenge.
Albert CamusThe fun is created only through innocence and innocence is the only way you can really emit also the fun. Imagine this world without any fun, what would happen?
Nirmala SrivastavaI think that for those of us who come from oppressed backgrounds and who do our work in marginalized communities, recovering our innocence is one of the most important acts of self-liberation and de-colonization. Not letting the requirement that we adapt to impossible circumstances and unconscionable crimes leave us shackled to the kind of cynicism and armor such that we can't breathe and laugh and magnetize to ourselves all the genius and love and support that we need to transform the situation. That's probably the biggest challenge, is to recover our innocence.
Van JonesI feel almost as if I had been born in a vacuum of innocence, and then had to come to terms with the fact that actually, I was born into the middle of history - the rather grimy normality of the 70s, which did, indeed, retain some traces of human innocence, but were also girded about by the demons of experience.
Quentin S. CrispFor I see that then I was still all in a state of innocence, but that innocence, once lost, is lost forever.
Susan HillPeople who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.
James A. BaldwinWe drank a toast to innocence, we drank a toast to now. And tried to reach beyond the emptiness, but neither one knew how.
Dan FogelbergIn former days, everyone found the assumption of innocence so easy; today we find fatally easy the assumption of guilt.
Carolyn HeilbrunYou do not have to incriminate yourself. But once you assert your innocence, and once you say you didn't do anything wrong, you can't then use the Fifth Amendment to say, 'I'm not answering questions.'
Rush LimbaughThe bourgeoisie is very fond of so-called practical types and novels with happy endings, since they soothe it with the idea that one can both accumulate capital and preserve innocence, be a beast and at the same time be happy...
Anton Chekhovwe have to listen to the child we once were, the child who still exists inside us. That child understands magic moments. We can stifle its cries, but we cannot silence its voice.The child we once were is still there. Blessed are the children, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.If we are not reborn if we cannot learn to look at life with the innocence and the enthusiasm o childhood it makes no sense to go on living.
Paulo CoelhoThere is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.
Flannery O'ConnorThe question of dying becomes a wise reminder. It cures us of our innocence of the future.
Don DeLilloThe only thing I was trying to portray was serenity. Also, innocence, vulnerability and elegance.
Sylvia KristelEvery act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.
Albert CamusThe innocence of such children doesn't answer our deepest questions about this vale of tears to which we are condemned, but it helps to dispel them. That is the secret to family life.
Joyce Carol OatesWe survive until, by sheer stamina, we escape into the dim innocence of our own adulthood and its forgetfulness.
Katherine DunnInnocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.
Graham GreeneThe way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God leads on, not back, not back to the wolf or to the child, but ever further into sin, ever deeper into human life.
Hermann HesseSmall crimes always precede great crimes. Whoever has been able to transgress the limits set by law may afterwards violate the most sacred rights; crime, like virtue, has its degrees, and never have we seen timid innocence pass suddenly to extreme licentiousness.
Jean RacineO! useful may it be to have shewn, that, though the vicious can sometimes pour affliction upon the good, their power is transient and their punishment certain; and that innocence, though oppressed by injustice, shall, supported by patience, finally triumph over misfortune!And, if the weak hand, that has recorded this tale, has, by its scenes, beguiled the mourner of one hour of sorrow, or, by its moral, taught him to sustain itโthe effort, however humble, has not been vain, nor is the writer unrewarded.
Ann RadcliffeHalloween wraps fear in innocence, as though it were a lightly sour sweet. Let terror, then, be turned into a treat.
Nick GordonThe practice of Zen mind is beginner's mind. The innocence of the first inquiryโwhat am I?โis needed throughout Zen practice. The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities. It is the kind of mind which can see things as they are, which step by step and in a flash can realize the original nature of everything.
Shunryu SuzukiO Innocence, with laughing eyes! Thou art a cherub from the skies, A wanderer from heaven.
Harvey RiceYour Christians, whom one persecutes in vain, have something in them that surpasses the human. They lead a life of such innocence,that the heavens owe them some recognition: that they arise the stronger the more they are beaten down is hardly the result of common virtues.
Pierre CorneilleThe Puritan, of course, is not entirely devoid of aesthetic feeling. He has a taste for good form; he responds to style; he is even capable of something approaching a purely aesthetic emotion. But he fears this aesthetic emotion as an insinuating distraction from his chief business in life: the sober consideration of the all-important problem of conduct. Art is a temptation, a seduction, a Lorelei, and the Good Man may safely have traffic with it when it is broken to moral uses--in other words, when its innocence is pumped out of it, and it is purged of gusto.
H. L. MenckenAlthough a man has so well purged his mind that nothing can trouble or deceive him any more, yet he reached his present innocence through sin.
Seneca the YoungerIn India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Salman RushdieI categorically declare first my absolute innocence, second my lack of criminal intent, and third my effusive apologies.
Jack VanceEverything good is costly, and the development of the personality is one of the most costly of all things. It will cost you your innocence, your illusions, your certainty. (10)
Sheldon B. KoppI bought my first camera to photograph my brother's children. I learned a lot from that experience. The value of innocence and of not being focused on yourself, and I have to say that these things have remained with me to this day. I can immediately feel when someone is putting on a camera face.
Peter Lindbergh[On the Adam and Eve story:] They both fell from innocence, and consequently from happiness, but not from equality.
Sarah Moore GrimkeTo be truly seen and understood - in all our innocence and glory and yes, our brokenness, too - is to be delivered into the spiritual ethers where both seen and seer are healed.
Marianne Williamson