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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• The artist's knowledge of his own creative nature is often unconscious; he pursues his mysterious way of life in a strange innocence.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Artist, Creative, Way

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• Even sleep is characteristic. How beautiful are children in their lovely innocence! how angel-like their blooming features! and how painful and anxious is the sleep of the guilty!

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Beautiful, Children, Sleep

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• The fruition of what is unlawful must be followed by remorse. The core sticks in the throat after the apple is eaten, and the sated appetite loathes the interdicted pleasure for which innocence was bartered.

  Jane Porter

  Apples, Fruition, Sticks

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• Sweet the young muse with love intense,
  Which smiles o'er sleeping innocence.

  Christopher Smart

  Sweet, Sleep, Muse

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• There is no courage but in innocence; no constancy but in an honest cause.

  Thomas Southerne

  Courage, Causes, Honest

  Thomas Southerne (1713). “The maid's last prayer: or, Any, rather than fail. The fatal marriage: or, The innocent adultery. Oroonoko. The fate of Capua. [Taken from general t-p; some variations on special t-ps, e.g. Sir Antony Love”, p.301

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• O blissful poverty!
  Nature, too partial! to thy lot assigns
  Health, freedom, innocence, and downy peace,
  Her real goods; and only mocks the great,
  With empty pageantries!

  Elijah Fenton

  Real, Pageantry, Poverty

  Edmund Smith, Mr. John Dryden, Mr. Elijah Fenton, Richard Steele (1750). “A Select Collection of the Best Modern English Plays: Vol. VI.”, p.61

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• Fear, if it be not immoderate, puts a guard about us that does watch and defend us; but credulity keeps us naked, and lays us open to all the sly assaults of ill-intending men: it was a virtue when man was in his innocence; but since his fall, it abuses those that own it.

  Owen Feltham

  Fall, Men, Abuse

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