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 AdamsInnocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.
Graham GreeneFor that purpose Christ instituted holy baptism, thereby to clothe you with his righteousness. It is tantamount to his saying, My righteousness shall be your righteousness; my innocence, your innocence. Your sins indeed are great, but by baptism I bestow on you my righteousness; I strip death from you and clothe you with my life.
Martin LutherTo be godless is probably the first step to innocence," he said, "to lose the sense of sin and subordination, the false grief for things supposed to be lost." So by innocence you mean not an absence of experience, but an absence of illusions." An absence of need for illusions," he said. "A love of and respect for what is right before your eyes.
Anne RiceThe quality of artistry is the capacity to assume innocence at will, the quality of experiencing innocence as if for the first time.
Robert FrippWriting itself, if not misunderstood and abused, becomes a way of empowering the writing self. It converts anger and disappointment into deliberate and durable aggression, the writer's main source of energy. It converts sorrow and self-pity into empathy, the writer's main means of relating to otherness. Similarly, his wounded innocence turns into irony, his silliness into wit, his guilt into judgment, his oddness into originality, his perverseness into his stinger.
Ted Solotaroff... pure and intelligent women can be deceived and misled by the baser sort, their very innocence and experience making them credulous and the helpless tools of the guilty and bold.
Catharine BeecherTo be a writer you need to see things as they are, and to see things as they are you need a certain basic innocence.
Tobias WolffIt is not enough to be a member of the Church of Christ, one needs to be a living member, in spirit and in truth, i.e., living in the state of grace and in the presence of God, either in innocence or in sincere repentance.
Pope Pius XIInnocence is drowned in anarchy. The best lack conviction given time to think, and the worst are full of passion without mercy.
Joni MitchellNo matter what happens, always Keep your childhood innocence. It's the most important thing.
Federico FelliniO! 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 RadcliffeDeath during adolescence feels unfair. We're young. We're invincible. Death is supposed to come with old age. When death breaks into our lives and steals our innocence, its finality leaves us unnaturally older. There are too many elderly young people.
Sara ShandlerIt's of more importance to community that innocence should be protected than it is that guilt should be punished
John AdamsHe is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.
Henry MillerI had discovered that love might be a pastime as well as a tragedy, and I gave myself to it with pagan innocence.
Isadora DuncanYou lie once.. you lie for the rest of your life... and in quest of proving your innocence.. you pledge your honesty with utter lies.... !!!
Abhijeet SawantIt wasn't the intention to do something important, or to even relate about social issues. The ground is so fertile in the justice world, dealing with the death penalty and the Innocence Project, for characters that have a moral ambiguity, which we were both attracted to. It's the idea that everybody has their reasons. Whatever their actions are, whether you agree with them or not, you can understand why they're feeling that way, in terms of racism or even the death penalty.
Richard LaGraveneseIn Homer and Chaucer there is more of the innocence and serenity of youth than in the more modern and moral poets. The Iliad is not Sabbath but morning reading, and men cling to this old song, because they still have moments of unbaptized and uncommitted life, which give them an appetite for more.
Henry David ThoreauMan, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past.
Octavio PazYou've had a whole lot of experience, but everything is also radically new at each moment, and you have to bring a kind of childlike second-level innocence to bear upon all situations, if you are going to be of use and you are going to really learn from the situation or the people.
Jean HoustonHad Adam tenderly reproved his wife, and endeavored to lead her to repentance instead of sharing in her guilt, I should be much more ready to accord to man that superiority which he claims; but as the facts stand disclosed by the sacred historian, it appears to me that to say the least, there was as much weakness exhibited by Adam as by Eve. They both fell from innocence, and consequently from happiness, but not from equality.
Sarah Moore GrimkeThey were still in the happier stage of love. They were full of brave illusions about each other, tremendous illusions, so that the communion of self with self seemed to be on a plane where no other human relations mattered. They both seemed to have arrived there with an extraordinary innocence as though a series of pure accidents had driven them together, so many accidents that at last they were forced to conclude that they were for each other. They had arrived with clean hands, or so it seemed, after no traffic with the merely curious and clandestine.
F. Scott FitzgeraldBesides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is around us, for it is everywhere; and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to gaurd us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognize our innocence, and God waits ony a speration of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward.
Charlotte BronteMaybe there are moments between any two adults in love when the age of one of them dissolves before the other's eyes, when the first refuge of the soul at its creation is laid bare and skinless as a sunbeam through a window. Innocence and vulnerability, two unmeasurable quantities...Perhaps that is the essence of the protection's intimacy, that it dwells in camouflage and justifies itself in stillness.
Marianne WigginsThe harvest moon has no innocence, like the slim quarter moon of a spring twilight, nor has it the silver penny brilliance of the moon that looks down upon the resorts of summer time. Wise, ripe, and portly, like an old Bacchus, it waxes night after night.
Donald C. PeattieMost men die many times in their lives. The man we become invariably slaughters the child we once were. His knowledge of the world murders the babe's innocence. from Time Untime by Sherrilyn Kenyon
Sherrilyn KenyonNo one is safe from slander. The best way is to pay no attention to it, but live in innocence and let the world talk.
MoliereIt is the custom to sneer at the modern apartment-house, television, big-city Christmas, with its commercial taint . . . office parties, artificial . . . Christmas trees . . . but future generations in search of their lost Christmases may well remember its innocence; yes, and its beauty, too.
Paul GallicoAs one sees a river pass into the ocean, lose itself in it, its water for a time distinguished from that of the sea, till it gradually becomes transformed into the same sea, and possesses all its qualities; so was my soul lost in God, who communicated to it His qualities, having drawn it out of all that it had of its own. Its life is an inconceivable innocence, not known or comprehended of those who are still shut up in themselves or only live for themselves.
Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte GuyonWhere I live, nobody who's fourteen is having sex and doing major drugs. And I think if you see it in the movies, you may be influenced by it. I think it's so important to preserve your innocence.
Natalie Portman