Innocence is not virtue. Virtue demands the active employment of an ardent mind in the promotion of the general good. No man can be eminently virtuous who is not accustomed to an extensive range of reflection.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.
Presumptions of guilt or innocence may sometimes be strengthened or weakened by the place of birth and kind of education and associates a man has grown up with, and good character may at times interpose, and justly save, under suspicion, one who is accused of crime on slight circumstances.
To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.
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.
Innocence is thought charming because it offers delightful possibilities for exploitation.
Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.
No man knows the value of innocence and integrity but he who has lost them.
Lust and greed are more gullible than innocence.
Innocence is a pretty dangerous thing, you know. Revisit Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot' or, for that matter, Greene's 'The Quiet American' to find out how destructive it can be.
Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.