Innocence Quotes - Page 38

• Anglers boast of the innocence of their pastime; yet it puts fellow-creatures to the torture. They pique themselves on their meditative faculties; and yet their only excuse is a want of thought.

  Leigh Hunt

  Sea, Fishing, Rivers

  Leigh Hunt (1859). “Works”, p.38

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• It is the condition of our present state to see more than we can attain; the exactest vigilance and caution can never maintain a single day of unmingled innocence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Ideas, Perfection

  "The life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D". Book by John Hawkins, 1787.

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• The person who takes power will never be happy with those things they gain. They have lost their essential balance and innocence. And without innocence, nothing can further, as they say in the I Ching.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Balance, Essentials

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• Disease generally begins that equality which death completes; the distinctions which set one man so much above another are very little perceived in the gloom of a sick chamber, where it will be vain to expect entertainment from the gay, or instruction from the wise; where all human glory is obliterated, the wit is clouded, the reasoner perplexed, and the hero subdued; where the highest and brightest of mortal beings finds nothing left him but the consciousness of innocence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wise, Hero, Gay

  Samuel Johnson (1784). “The Rambler: In Four Volumes..”, p.290

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• The girl of the period sets up to be natural, and is only rude; mistakes insolence for innocence; says everything that comes first to her lips, and thinks she is gay when she is only giddy.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Girl, Mistake, Gay

  Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) (1881). “Wit and Wisdom”

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• What I call innocence is the spirit's unself-conscious state at any moment of pure devotion to any object. It is at once a receptiveness and total concentration.

  Annie Dillard

  Spirit, Moments, Devotion

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.83, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• Innocence is not accustomed to blush.
  [Fr., L'innocence a rougir n'est point accoutumee.]

  Moliere

  Accustomed

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• The magic, the wonder, the mystery and the innocence of a child’s heart are the seeds of creativity that will heal the world.

  Michael Jackson

  Children, Heart, Creativity

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• The innocence of virgins is like milk which turns when exposed to a clap of thunder, to a tart smell, to a hot day, to the merest nothing.

  Honore de Balzac

  Smell, Hot, Milk

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• It is difficult to live with the pure. They do not condemn you; they forgive you. This forgiveness is more terrible than a judgment.

  Anais Nin

  Perfection, Forgiving, Judgment

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• For when man comes to front the everlasting God, and look the splendor of His judgments in the face, personal integrity, the dream of spotlessness and innocence, vanishes into thin air: your decencies and your church-goings and your regularities and your attachment to a correct school and party, your gospel formulas of sound doctrine--what is all that, in front of the blaze of the wrath to come?

  Frederick William Robertson

  Dream, Integrity, Party

  Frederick William Robertson (1873). “Sermons Preached at Brighton”, p.109

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• There is nothing which one regards so much with an eye of mirth and pity as innocence when it has in it a dash of folly.

  Joseph Addison

  Eye, Mirth, Pity

  Joseph Addison, Richard Steele (1854). “The Spectator”, p.282

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• The first of all virtues is innocence; the next is modesty. If we banish modesty out of the world, she carries away with her half the virtue that is in it.

  Joseph Addison

  Half, World, Next

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• Affectation is to be always distinguished from hypocrisy as being the art of counterfeiting those qualities, which we might with innocence and safety, be known to want. Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy; affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Hypocrisy, Safety

  Samuel Johnson (1819). “The Beauties of Samuel Johnson: Consisting of Maxims and Observations, Moral, Critical, and Miscellaneous”, p.23

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• Those who have lost an infant are never, as it were, without an infant child. Their other children grow up to manhood and womanhood, and suffer all the changes of mortality; but this one alone is rendered an immortal child; for death has arrested it with his kindly harshness, and blessed it into an eternal image of youth and innocence.

  Leigh Hunt

  Growing Up, Children, Blessed

  Leigh Hunt (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt (Illustrated)”, p.1782, Delphi Classics

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• Nor turned I ween Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites Mysterious of connubial love refused: Whatever hypocrites austerely talk Of purity and place and innocence, Defaming as impure what God declares Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all.

  John Milton

  Hypocrite, Mysterious, Purity

  'Paradise Lost' (1667) bk. 4, l. 738

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• Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence.

  Thomas Paine

  Government, Dresses, Lost

  Common Sense (1776)

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• Oh that simplicity and innocence its own unvalued work so seldom knows!

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Simplicity, Knows

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• Seeing the world anew, as if it were new, is as old as writing. It's what all painters are trying to do, to see what's there, to see it in a way that renews it. It becomes more and more urgent as the planet gets worn flat and forest after forest is slain to print the paper for people's impressions to be scrawled down on. It becomes harder and harder to be original, to see things with an innocent eye. Innocence is much tied up with it. As the planet gets progressively less innocent, you need a more innocent eye to see it.

  Martin Amis

  Writing, Eye, People

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• I once loved a girl, her skin it was bronze With the innocence of a lamb, she was gentle like a fawn I courted her proudly but now she is gone Gone as the season she's taken

  Bob Dylan

  Girl, Taken, Skins

  Song: Ballad in Plain D, Album: Another Side of Bob Dylan, 1964

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• The pose of innocence is as mandatory as the ability to eat banquet food and endure the scourging of the press.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Banquets, Endure, Ability

  Lewis H. Lapham (1989). “Money and Class in America: Notes and Observations on the Civil Religion”

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• Innocence lost is not easily regained. The designer simply cannot predict the problems people will have, the misinterpretations that will arise, and the errors that will get made.

  Donald A. Norman

  Errors, People, Problem

  "The Design of Everyday Things". Book by Don Norman, ch. 6, 1988.

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• It is a blessing not yet to have acquired that over-keen, diagnostic, misanthropic eye, and to be able to look at people and things trustfully when one first sees them.

  Stefan Zweig

  Eye, Blessing, People

  "Beware of Pity". Book by Stefan Zweig, 1939.

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• The silliest and most tendentious of baseball writing tries to wrest profundity from the spectacle of grown men hitting a ball with a stick by suggesting linkages between the sport and deep issues of morality, parenthood, history, lost innocence, gentleness, and so on, seemingly ad infinitum . (The effort reeks of silliness because baseball is profound all by itself and needs no excuses; people who don't know this are not fans and are therefore unreachable anyway.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Sports, Baseball, Writing

  Stephen Jay Gould (1991). “Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History”, W W Norton & Company Incorporated

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• I doubt not then but innocence shall makeFalse accusation blush, and tyrannyTremble at patience.

  William Shakespeare

  Doubt, Accusation, False Accusation

  William Shakespeare, James Boswell, Alexander Pope, Richard Farmer, Samuel Johnson (1821). “The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare”, p.308

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