Quotations About / On: INNOCENCE

  • 41.
    What is our innocence,
    what is our guilt? All are
    naked, none is safe.
    (Marianne Moore (1887-1972), U.S. poet. What Are Years? (L. 1-3). . . The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore. (1981) Penguin Books.)
    More quotations from: Marianne Moore, guilt, innocence
  • 42.
    Innocence: "I am only stepping on your face because it lies in my path."
    (Mason Cooley (b. 1927), U.S. aphorist. City Aphorisms, Second Selection, New York (1985).)
    More quotations from: Mason Cooley, innocence
  • 43.
    The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever.
    (John Updike (b. 1932), U.S. author, critic. Self-Consciousness: Memoirs, ch. 1 (1989).)
    More quotations from: John Updike, innocence
  • 44.
    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 (1904-1991), British novelist. The Quiet American, pt. 1, ch. 3, sct. 3 (1955). Later in the book, the narrator describes Pyle—"the quiet American" of the title, a fumbling idealist in Cold-War Vietnam—in similar terms: "What's the good? He'll always be innocent, you can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity." (pt. 3, ch. 2, sct. 1).)
    More quotations from: Graham Greene, innocence, lost, world
  • 45.
    People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.
    (James Baldwin (1924-1987), U.S. author. repr. in Notes of a Native Son, pt. 2 (1955). "Stranger in the Village," Harper's (New York, Oct. 1953).)
    More quotations from: James Baldwin, innocence, people
  • 46.
    Innocence is lovely in the child, because in harmony with its nature; but our path in life is not backward but onward, and virtue can never be the offspring of mere innocence. If we are to progress in the knowledge of good, we must also progress in the knowledge of evil. Every experience of evil brings its own temptation and according to the degree in which the evil is recognized and the temptations resisted, will be the value of the character into which the individual will develop.
    (Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824-1899), U.S. author. Sensible Etiquette of the Best Society Customs, Manners, Morals, and Home Culture, Compiled from the Best Authorities, ch. 12 (1878).)
    More quotations from: Mrs. H. O Ward, evil, innocence, child, nature, life
  • 47.
    We were as twinned lambs that did frisk i' the sun
    And bleat the one at th' other. What we changed
    Was innocence for innocence; we knew not
    The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dreamed
    That any did. Had we pursued that life,
    And our weak spirits ne'er been higher reared
    With stronger blood, we should have answered heaven
    Boldly "Not guilty," the imposition cleared
    Hereditary ours.
    (William Shakespeare (1564-1616), British poet. The Winter's Tale (I, ii). On his childhood friendship with Leontes; "changes" means exchanged. The Unabridged William Shakespeare, William George Clark and William Aldis Wright, eds. (1989) Running Press.)
    More quotations from: William Shakespeare, innocence, sun, heaven, life
  • 48.
    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 (1904-1991), British novelist. The Quiet American, pt. 1, ch. 3, sct. 3 (1955). Later in the book, the narrator describes Pyle—"the quiet American" of the title, a fumbling idealist in Cold-War Vietnam—in similar terms: "What's the good? He'll always be innocent, you can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity." (pt. 3, ch. 2, sct. 1).)
    More quotations from: Graham Greene, innocence, lost, world
  • 49.
    Victims suggest innocence. And innocence, by the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms, suggests guilt.
    (Susan Sontag (b. 1933), U.S. essayist. AIDS and Its Metaphors, ch. 1 (1989).)
    More quotations from: Susan Sontag, innocence, guilt
  • 50.
    Innocence always calls mutely for protection, when we would be much wiser to guard ourselves against it ... innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world meaning no harm.
    (Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), British novelist, story writer, essayist, and memoirist; born in Ireland. From To the North (1961). As quoted in Elizabeth Bowen, ch. 5, by Victoria Glendinning (1979).)
    More quotations from: Elizabeth Bowen, innocence, lost, world

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