Innocence

“ We can discover that where there is universal innocence, there will probably be universal happiness; for, why should afflictions be permitted to infest beings who are not in danger of corruption from blessings, and where there is no use of terrour nor cause of punishment? But in a world like ours, where our senses assault us, and our hearts betray us, we should pass on from crime to crime, heedless and remorseless, if misery did not stand in our way, and our own pains admonish us of our folly. ”

“ Never were truth and innocence written so clearly on human countenance as on his as he looked upon the jury with his eagle eyes, addressing them without pride, but with infinite majesty, as if he could rule their souls through the power of a clear conscience and a just cause ”

“ Hence spring, and thus are explained, the power and the charm which the idea of innocence has for us; absolute innocence we have never seen, but the idea is still vouchsafed to us; and so it appears to us in the cradle of the world, and in the cradle of the infant, and the pleasure is infinite which we derive from the ideal spectacle of purity which they each suggest. ”

“ I cannot, as I look at it now before me and as I write these words, express, however much I may seek for expression, how great a meaning underlies that accident nor how full of fate and of reason and of suggested truth that aureole grows as I gaze. Your innocence is beatified by it, and takes on with majesty the glory which lies behind all innocence, but which our eyes can never see. ”

“ To make innocence suffer is the greatest sin; how then is it possible to make the suffering of the innocent a justification for the criminal? Why should a man be willing to let the innocent suffer for him? ”

“ Ah, no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience! ”

“ Choose, in short, which of the two alternatives you prefer. If innocence is on your side, why do you persecute us with the sword? Or if you call us guilty, why do you, who are yourselves innocent, seek for our company? ”

“ Who will ever believe in your innocence, if innocent you still be? You shut the doors of fate upon yourself. You turn your life of your own will into stone. Nature has made you glorious gifts, and you throw them all away like rotting leaves. ”

“ Ah: my dear—Madam there is the great mistake—'tis this very conscious Innocence that is of the greatest Prejudice to you— what is it makes you negligent of Forms and careless of the world's opinion—why the consciousness of your Innocence—what makes you thoughtless in your Conduct and apt to run into a thousand little imprudences—why the consciousness of your Innocence—what makes you impatient of Sir Peter's temper, and outrageous at his suspicions— why the consciousness of your own Innocence— LADY TEAZLE.
'Tis very true. ”

“ This spotless way beginneth from innocence, and it endeth also in innocence. Why seek many words? Be innocent: and thou hast perfected righteousness....But who is innocent? He who while he hurteth not another, injureth not himself. For he who hurteth himself, is not innocent. ”

“ That is to say, it is not the gracious elemental innocence which has such attractive qualities; but it is rather the cultivated, mature innocence, in which no one can be mistaken, and which goes straight to the heart. ”

“ This being the very essence of wrong, how can the suffering of innocence justify the guilty? If there be a world of joy, he who is worthy to enter that world must be willing to carry his own burdens in this. ”

“ Her charm was made up of goodness, simplicity and, above all, innocence, that innocence which is unaware of its own existence, which knows nothing of life, which suspects no evil and which does not see the traps laid for it, nor the hypocrisy that surrounds it, nor the envy which it inspires. ”

“ No man that has not felt, in his own most momentous concerns, justice, eternal truth, unalterable equity engaged in his behalf, and on the other side brute force, impenetrable obstinacy, and unfeeling insolence, can imagine the sensations that then passed through my mind. I saw treachery triumphant and enthroned; I saw the sinews of innocence crumbled into dust by the gripe of almighty guilt. ”

“ To Heaven I leave the vindication of my innocence. Its justice is sure, though sometimes slow, and the hour of retribution often arrives when least expected. Much as I have suffered—much as I may still suffer, I think my own situation preferable to theirs who have set their snares around me. The injurer must ever feel greater pangs than the injured—the pangs of guilt and remorse. I shall return to my obscurity, happy in the consciousness that it is not a shelter from shame, but a refuge from cruelty I seek. ”

“ But one thing which stands by innocence, is the love of God; for were we to suffer disgrace, nay, an ignominious death itself, what consolation does our innocence procure at our latest conflict, our last moments! ”

“ What can Innocence hope for,
When such as sit her judges are corrupted! ”

“ Why is there this cruel haste to corrupt innocence, to make, a victim of a young creature whom we ought to protect, one who is dragged by this first false step into a gulf of misery from which only death can release her? ”

“ If there be error, it lies with the deceiver, not the deceived. And you, my sons and disciples, banish from your faces and your breasts every expression and every thought unworthy of your honest companion, and your upright sect. For remember, if to abhor falsehood and vice be noble, to distrust truth and innocence is mean. ”

“ Accused, and forced by her sisters along with the child before the curate, his attention to their representation, his crimson face, knit brow, and thundering voice, struck with terror her very soul: innocence is not always a protection against fear—sometimes less bold than guilt. ”

“ It stays the pulse. Innocence is greater than virtue; innocence is holy ignorance. They slept; they were at peace; they were warm. The nakedness of their interlaced bodies imaged the virginity of their souls. ”

“ The outward covering of infantile and childish innocence, with which those passions and propensities were enveloped, is broken through; those hidden evils, coming forth, cast off their gilded covering, and, with it, also, the beauty and the joy which it communicated. And then the anxieties and pains which evil and sin always bring in their train, nay, which belong to their very nature and are inseparable from them, begin to be felt. ”

“ Both the domestic records of families and the public histories of nations have furnished us with admirable instances of innocence voluntarily offering itself as a sacrifice, taking upon itself the penalty, the suffering, the death, to expiate the sin of others, and to win from Divine Justice—now satisfied—the pardon of the offender. ”

“ Innocence is indeed priceless—that innocence which God counteth innocence, but thine was a flimsy show, a bit of polished and cherished glass—instead of which, if thou repentest, thou shalt in thy jewel-box find a diamond. ”

“ It was long before the one single fact of Christian's innocence—proved, unquestionable innocence—had become sufficiently real and familiar for the mother and daughter to hear or to tell how the truth had come to light, and the justice of Heaven been swifter and surer than that of man. ”

“ Mere innocence taints and spoils as surely before the influence of the world, as true principle flourishes in spite of it, and strengthens. This, too, I have seen, not once only: I have seen the innocence of early boyhood sanctified by something better than innocence, which gave a promise of abiding. ”

“ In this view, you seek to find an innocence that is not Theirs but yours alone, and at the cost of someone else's guilt. Can innocence be purchased by the giving of your guilt to someone else? And is it innocence that your attack on him attempts to get? Is it not retribution for your own attack upon the Son of God you seek? Is it not safer to believe that you are innocent of this, and victimized despite your innocence? Whatever way the game of guilt is played, there must be loss. Someone must lose his innocence that someone else can take it from him, making it his own. ”

“ Nor must we be: there is upon us the compulsion to prove that a life of innocence is possible. And as a first step, we must separate ourselves from those who, before they have sought innocence, praise the senses. ”

“ And beside it he placed a picture of pristine innocence,—of man enjoying the full development of his physical powers; living for the day as it rose, untouched by care, unbewildered by intellectual speculations,—by vanity, emulation, or pride;—man liberated from the control of opinion and the tyranny of his own unreasonable desires. ”

“ Hence, the sudden infatuation and rapid ruin which we sometimes witness,—the cases in which there seems but a single step between innocence and deep depravity. In truth there are many steps; but until they become precipitous, they are veiled from human sight. ”

“ It is the strangest problem of humanity,–one too for which the closest investigation can never quite account,—to trace the progress by which innocence becomes guilt, and how those who formerly trembled to think of crime are led on to commit that at which they once shuddered. ”

“ I grew confused, "I thought you believed in his innocence."
"Refusing to believe that he is mixed up in a crime is quite another matter from vouching for a person's respectability," she remarked decidedly. ”

“ He, whose white robe of innocence has been, however unjustly, smirched, may go on his way through the world, no one will wash him clean; even if God were to proclaim his innocence by signs and wonders--the world would not believe. ”

“ Admire the force of innocence, which could even move a heathen, and one of the worst of men, such as Pilate was, and assure thyself, that generally speaking, patience and silence are a thousand times better proofs of thy innocence, than returning injury for injury, and making an opprobrious and clamorous defence. ”

“ Suppose somebody, with that simple and unspoilt realism that is a part of innocence, to pursue that journey to its end, not for the sake of what he could deduce or demonstrate in some dusty magazine controversy, but simply for the sake of what he could see. ”

“ But purity and innocence may be prolonged too late; innocence is really no more becoming to adults than a rattle or a rubber consoler, and the bashfulness that hampers this discussion, that permits it only in a furtive silly sort of way, has its ugly consequences in shames and cruelties, in miserable households and pitiful crises, in the production of countless, needless, and unhappy lives. ”

“ So Justice, while she winks at crimes,
Stumbles on innocence sometimes. ”

“ And the trial of man’s obedience is imaged in the other tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. From the childlike innocence in which man originally was, he was to pass forward into the condition of moral manhood, which consists not in mere innocence, but in innocence maintained in presence of temptation.... ”

“ Would an innocent person, at such a time as this, offer money for assistance to make an escape? I think not; and I wish she may find a satisfactory cause to assign for such amazing behaviour.
Let us put innocence and guilt in the scale together, and observe to which side the prisoner's actions are most applicable. Innocence, celestial virgin, always has her guard about her; she dares look the frowns, the resentments, and the persecutions of the world in the face; is able to stand the test of the strictest inquiry ”

“ Early in life she had discovered the important truth that nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion; and by a series of reckless escapades, half of them quite harmless, she had acquired all the privileges of a personality. ”

“ Purposes fraught with horror, that shun the light, and contemplate the pollution of innocence, are here engendered, and fostered, and reared to maturity. ”

“ Innocence is the morality of the instincts. Original Sin—that was war upon the instincts, morality become abstract, separate, self-centred, accusing and tyrannical. This self-consciousness of morality, this disruption in the nature of Man, was the Fall. ”

“ what we chang'd, Was Innocence, for Innocence: we knew not The Doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream'd That any did: Had we pursu'd that life, And our weake Spirits ne're been higher rear'd With stronger blood, we should haue answer'd Heauen Boldly, not guilty; ”

“ Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea. ”

“ In a positive sense, of course, nothing means anything, or every meaning is continuous with all other meanings: or that all evidences of guilt, for instance, are just as good evidences of innocence—but this condition seems to mean—things lying around among the stars a long time. ”

“ Hast thou betrayed my credulous innocence
With vizored falsehood and base forgery? ”