Innocence

Famous quotes containing the word innocence:

“Innocence always calls mutely for protection, when we would be much wiser to guard ourselves against it ... innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world meaning no harm.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)

“Our civilization has decided ... that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men.... When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)

“Et in Arcadia ego.
[I too am in Arcadia.]”
—Anonymous, Anonymous.

Tomb inscription, appearing in classical paintings by Guercino and Poussin, among others. The words probably mean that even the most ideal earthly lives are mortal. Arcadia, a mountainous region in the central Peloponnese, Greece, was the rustic abode of Pan, depicted in literature and art as a land of innocence and ease, and was the title of Sir Philip Sidney’s pastoral romance (1590)