When we take revenge against another, we lose some of our innocence.
PATRICE REDD VECCHIONE, Revenge and Forgiveness
Innocence 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 GREENE, The Quiet American
Ignorance is not innocence but sin.
ROBERT BROWNING, The Inn Album
It’s innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn’t.
MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN, The Neurotic's Notebook
- Go in thy native innocence, rely
- On what thou hast of virtue, summon all,
- For God towards thee hath done his part, do thine.
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
All things truly wicked start from an innocence.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY, A Moveable Feast
Innocence is the weakest defense. Innocence has a single voice that can only say over and over again, "I didn't do it." Guilt has a thousand voices, all of them lies.
LEONARD F. PELTIER, Prison Writings
Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Walden
An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore untrustworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines.
I used to be Snow White -- but I drifted.
MAE WEST, The Wit and Wisdom of Mae West
- We each begin in innocence.
- We all become guilty.
LEONARD F. PELTIER, Prison Writings
No acquisitions of guilt can compensate the loss of that solid inward comfort of mind, which is the sure companion of innocence and virtue; nor can in the least balance the evil of that horror and anxiety which, in their room, guilt introduces into our bosoms.
HENRY FIELDING, Tom Jones
The presumption of innocence only means you don't go right to jail.
ANN COULTER, Hannity & Colmes, Aug. 24, 2001
Always the innocent are the first victims.... So it has been for ages past, so it is now.
J. K. ROWLING, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Ignorance is learned; innocence is forgotten.
JOSÉ BERGAMÍN, The Rocket and the Star
To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.
OUIDA, Two Little Wooden Shoes
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