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Quotations about innocence
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
A man is a god in ruins.
It had snowed in the night, and the world looked very clean, which I knew it not to be. But illusion is nice sometimes.
Oh! To be a child again. My only treasures, bits of shell and stone and glass. To love nothing but maple sugar. To fear nothing but a big dog. To go to sleep without dreading the morrow. To wake up with a shout. Not to have seen a dead face. Not to dread a living one. To be able to believe.
Fanny Fern (1811-1872) American columnist, humorist, author [b. Sara Willis]
Ginger-Snaps (1870)
It’s innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn’t.
Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Neurotic’s Notebook (1963)
A cheerful temper, joined with innocence will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good-natured.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
The Tatler #192 (1 Jul 1710)
Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: This is the ideal life.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Mark Twain’s Notebook [ed. Paine (1935)]
Trust no friend without faults,
And love a maiden, but no angel.[Trau keinem Freunde sonder Mängel,
Und leib’ ein Mädchen, kienem Engel.]Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) German playwright, philosopher, dramiturg, writer
Note in a Family Register (1778)
Alt. trans.: "Trust in no friend, rather forebear; / Love a sweet maid, no angel rare."
HAWKEYE: War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.
FR. MULCAHEY: How do you figure, Hawkeye?
HAWKEYE: Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?
FR. MULCAHEY: Sinners, I believe.
HAWKEYE: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them — little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.
Burt Prelutsky (b. 1940) American TV screenwriter, author, columnist, critic
M*A*S*H, 5×20 “The General’s Practitioner” (15 Feb 1977)
To spare the guilty is to injure the innocent.
Publilius Syrus (d. 42 BC) Assyrian slave, writer, philosopher [less correctly Publius Syrus]
Sententiae [Moral Sayings], # 113 [tr. Lyman (1862)]
I hear much of People’s calling out to punish the Guilty, but very few are concern’d to clear the Innocent.
Daniel Defoe (1660?-1731) English journalist and novelist
An Appeal to Honour and Justice, Tho’ it be of His Worse Enemies (1715)
It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, “whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,” and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.
John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
(Attributed)
Cited in some cases as the closing argument while defending the British Soldiers accused of killing 5 colonists in the "Boston Massacre" (usually given as "Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials" (Dec 1770)), but I did not find it in accounts of that defense.
We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself!
Albert Camus (1913-1960) Algerian-French novelist, essayist, playwright
The Fall (1956) [tr. J. O’Brien]
Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Hamlet Act 3, sc. 1, l. 139 [Hamlet] (1600)
