There are innumerable ways to murder a person, but the most subtle and pernicious of these is to mutilate the soul of the innocent by denying or downgrading their uniqueness and their beauty.
Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of." [From the preface.]
How do you measure the life of one person against the greater good? Can it ever be the right thing to sacrifice an innocent person? And how do you know what the greater good really is?
The hopeless hope is one of the early harbingers of spring, bespeaking an innocent belief that the world might right its wrongs and reverse its curses simply because the trees are coming into leaf.
Adults had the notion that juveniles needed to suffer. Only when they had suffered enough to wipe out most of their naturally joyous spirits and innocence were they staid enough to be considered mature. An adult was essentially a broken-down child.
It was thus, Archer reflected, that New York managed its transitions; conspiring to ignore them till they were well over, and then, in all good faith, imagining that they had taken place in a preceding age.
With a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.
he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.
There were certain things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and thoroughly; and one of these, in the old New York code, was the tribal rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe.
It is strange the way that someone who wants to find you guilty can start to make you believe in your own guilt, even when you know you are innocent. I was afraid I would condemn myself my mistake.
Sometimes the good guy rips out innocent people's throats. That's just something the world need to live with if it wants the good guy to keep saving the day.
This couple thought they were as smooth as crunchy peanut butter. But they didn’t fool me with their Bonnie and Clyde act. I knew they were guilty of being innocent the moment I saw them.
RICH I’m lamenting. I’ve lost my innocence. CROMWELL You lost that some time ago. If you’ve only just noticed, it can’t have been very important to you.
When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.
In every guilty man, there is an element of innocence. This is what makes any absolute condemnation revolting. We do not think enough about pain" Albert Camus
We made love like a flag draped over the coffin of a soldier. But that soldier, he fought for that flag’s enemy—he fought for the innocent people living under the shadow of that flag.
Love wasn't to be measured, much less restricted, by methodology. Love wasn't a method. Love was a faculty of the highest order, imagined or unimagined. Love wasn't an activity. Love was an experience. Love was the second coming of innocence.
We cannot live side by side with obviously distressed people unless they are to blame and we are innocent. Nothing inside them or the way they live can be allowed to disturb our lives.
Ransom perceived that he had never before seen anything but half-hearted and uneasy attempts at evil. This creature was whole-hearted. The extremity of its evil had passed beyond all struggle into some state which bore a horrible similarity to innoce...
... it isn't really guilt that is important - it's innocence. ... Some people may go through a lifetime crushed by the weight of a suspicion that is really unjustified." - Sir Henry Clithering, The Four Suspects, Pg. 122
As we change, we sometimes outgrow our friendships. And, since we cannot change this fact, it is best to simply accept it for what it is in order to appreciate the power that the friend had in your life when he or she was a part of it.
