Innocence

Innocence is a term that describes the lack of guilt of an individual, with respect to a crime. It may also be used to indicate a general lack of guilt, with respect to any kind of crime, sin, or wrongdoing.

Sourced

• Every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice.
  • Lyman Abbott, quoted in The Seven Powerful Secrets of Emotional Sex‎ (2005) by A. Vishwanath, p. 144

• Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.
  • Anatole France, in Les Dieux Ont Soif [The Gods Are Thirsty] (1912), Ch. XV

• Innocence once lost cannot be regained.
  • Lucifer in The Sandman: Season of Mists by Neil Gaiman

• Summer has come and passed
  The innocent can never last.
  • Green Day, in "Wake Me Up When September Ends"

• That's what it takes to be a hero, a little gem of innocence inside you that makes you want to believe that there still exists a right and wrong, that decency will somehow triumph in the end.
  • Lise Hand, quoted in The Truth in Words : Inspiring Quotes for the Reflective Mind (2002) by Paras, p. 107

• Assuredly we bring not innocence not the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.
  • John Milton, in Areopagitica (1644)

• Resentment seems to have been given us by nature for a defense, and for a defense only. It is the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence.
  • Adam Smith, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) Sect. II : Of Justice and Beneficence, Ch. 2

• Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.
  • Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, in On Germany (1813), Pt. II, Ch. VIII

Unsourced

• A babe in the house is a well-spring of pleasure, a messenger of peace and love, a resting place for innocence on earth, a link between angels and men.
  • Martin Farquhar Tupper

• All things truly wicked start from an innocence.
  • Ernest Hemingway

• Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popular.
  • Maximilien Robespierre

• Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime.
  • Maximilien Robespierre

• He that is conscious of guilt cannot bear the innocence of others: So they will try to reduce all others to their own level.
  • Charles James Fox

• I think innocence is something that adults project upon children that's not really there.
  • Donna Tartt

• In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.
  • A. E. Housman

• Individualism is rather like innocence; there must be something unconscious about it.
  • Louis Kronenberger

• 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

• Innocence is always unsuspicious.
  • Joseph Joubert

• Innocence is like polished armor; it adorns and defends.
  • Robert South

• It is innocence that is full and experience that is empty. It is innocence that wins and experience that loses.
  • Charles Peguy

• It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.
  • Mignon McLaughlin

• Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase are fruits of innocence and blessedness.
  • William Cullen Bryant

• The Architect is just one of a series of works which examine the confrontation of innocence and experience, illustrating the complex ethics of power that exist between reader and writer, critic and artist, the human and the divine.
  • John Scott

• Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
  • Henry David Thoreau

• To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.
  • Ouida

• Victims suggest innocence. And innocence, by the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms, suggests guilt.
  • Susan Sontag

• Where choice begins, Paradise ends, innocence ends, for what is Paradise but the absence of any need to choose this action?
  • Arthur Miller

• Where 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