C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Innocence
Happy the innocent whose equal thoughts are free from anguish as they are from faults.
Unto the pure all things are pure.
Innocence is ignorance.
The innocent seldom find an uneasy pillow.
Innocence is always unsuspicious.
They that know no evil will suspect none.
Oh, keep me innocent, make others great.
Who knows nothing base, fears nothing known.
The most effective coquetry is innocence.
The first of all virtues is innocence; the next is modesty.
He’s armed without that’s innocent within.
There is no courage but in innocence, no constancy but in an honest cause.
Innocence is like polished armor; it adorns and it defends.
Innocence and mystery never dwell long together.
Let our lives be pure as snow-fields, where our footsteps leave a mark, but not a stain.
Alas! innocence is but a poor substitute for experience.
Innocence is a flower which withers when touched, but blooms not again, though watered with tears.
Innocence finds not near so much protection as guilt.
There is a heroic innocence, as well as a heroic courage.
We have not the innocence of Eden; but by God’s help and Christ’s example we may have the victory of Gethsemane.
The innocence that feels no risk and is taught no caution is more vulnerable than guilt, and oftener assailed.
To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence—an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.
What a power there is in innocence! whose very helplessness is its safeguard: in whose presence even passion himself stands abashed, and stands worshipper at the very altar he came to despoil.
Of all the sights which can soften and humanize the heart of man, there is none that ought so surely to reach it as that of innocent children enjoying the happiness which is their proper and natural portion.
Coerced innocence is like an imprisoned lark,—open the door, and it is off forever. The bird that roams through the sky and the groves unrestrained knows how to dodge the hawk and protect itself; but the caged one, the moment it leaves its bars and bolts behind, is pounced upon by the fowler or the vulture.
O innocence, how glorious and happy a portion art thou to the breast that possesses thee! thou fearest neither the eyes nor the tongues of men. Truth, the most powerful of all things, is thy strongest friend; and the brighter the light is in which thou art displayed, the more it discovers thy transcendent beauties.