Assume Innocence Quotes

You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her.

Perhaps he simply assumed: a bitterness of habit, of boy after boy trained for music and medicine, and unleashed for murder.

...guilt is often assumed before innocence can be proven.

Freedom, "that terrible word inscribed on the chariot of the storm," is the motivating principle of all revolutions. Without it, justice seems inconceivable to the rebel's mind. There comes a time, however, when justice demands the suspension of freedom. Then terror, on a grand or small scale, makes its appearance to consummate the revolution. Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being. But one day nostalgia takes up arms and assumes the responsibility of total guilt; in other words, adopts murder and violence.

He had learned a lesson about propaganda in politics and mused wearily that “no character, however upright, is a match for constantly reiterated attacks, however false.” If a charge was made often enough, people assumed in the end “that a person so often accused cannot be entirely innocent.

To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent.

Dalgliesh was too experienced to assume that fear implied guilt; it was often the most innocent who were the most terrified.

You can call it innocence or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: She assumed that everyone else was just like her. Evidence to the contrary found nowhere to lodge, like a book on chaos theory in a library that didn't have a physics section.

People, in general, tend to project onto others their own state of mind. Well-meaning people inevitably assume other people are well meaning. People who cheat assume everyone cheats. People who deceive assume everybody deceives. Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Anna C. Salter. Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2 June 1998

The way young people speak about one another's bodies says a great deal about our society. In today's world, boys are much more likely to objectify girl's bodies than the other way around. Boys will say amongst themselves that so-and-so has a nice rack, while girls will more likely say that a boy is cute, a term that describes both physical and emotional characteristics. This has the effect of turning girls into mere objects, while boys are seen by girls as whole people-" And then Lara stood up, and in her delicate, innocent accent, cut Dr. William Morse off. "You're so hot! I weesh you'd shut up and take off your clothes." The students laughed, but all of the teachers turned around and looked at her, stunned silent. She sat down. "What's you name, dear?" "Lara,"she said. "Now, Lara." Maxx said, looking down at his paper to remember the line, "what we have here is a very interesting case study- a female objectifying me, a male. It's so unusual that I can only assume you're making an attempt at humor." Lara stood up again and shouted, "I'm not keeding! Take off your clothes." He nervously looked down at the paper, and then looked up at all of us, smiling. "Well, it is certainly important to subvert the patriarchal paradigm , and I suppose this is a way. All right, then.

If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working scheme. Silent nameless men with unadorned hearts. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It's the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act.

What is embarrassment? In general, embarrassment is an emotional response to an innocent mistake. The major reason that some of us are embarrassment-prone is that we’ve been conditioned to set unrealistically high expectations for ourselves and to judge ourselves negatively when we can’t possibly meet those standards. A second reason that makes us susceptible to embarrassment is that we’ve been taught to take our cue in evaluating ourselves from what we assume (often erroneously) to be others’ opinions of us.

The true guilty draw a curtain on the past. The most innocent assume the guilt. Unfortunately there are too few Germans like that girl.

If a charge was made often enough, people assumed in the end “that a person so often accused cannot be entirely innocent.

So you assume we go around painting ourselves with pitch and swooping from rooftops to devour innocents, and call ourselves things like Shale Swiftwing, Beloved of the Goddess, Scout-in-Shadows.

The life of the cenobite is a human problem. When we speak of convents, those seats of error but innocence, of mistaken views but good intentions, of ignorance but devotion, of torment but martyrdom, we must nearly always say yes or no...The monastery is a renunciation. Self-sacrifice, even when misdirected, is still self-sacrifice. To assume as duty a strict error has its peculiar grandeur.

I observed with assumed innocence that no man was safe from trouble in this world.

Charlotte never lied to others, so she made the classic mistake of the habitually honest—she assumed that other people did not lie to her, at least not to her face. In her world, people were innocent of deliberate deceit until proven otherwise, which was, of course, way too late. Even

Again his dead wife came back to his imagination, but not as he had known her for many years, not as the good domestic housewife, but as a young girl with a slim figure, innocently inquiring eyes, and a tight twist of hair on her childish neck. He remembered how he had seen her for the first time. He was still a student then. He had met her on the staircase of his lodgings, and, jostling by accident against her, he tried to apologise, and could only mutter, 'Pardon, monsieur,' while she bowed, smiled, and suddenly seemed frightened, and ran away, though at the bend of the staircase she had glanced rapidly at him, assumed a serious air, and blushed. Afterwards, the first timid visits, the half-words, the half-smiles, and embarrassment; and melancholy, and yearnings, and at last that breathing rapture.... Where had it all vanished? She had been his wife, he had been happy as few on earth are happy.... 'But,' he mused, 'these sweet first moments, why could one not live an eternal, undying life in them?

He didn’t wear his rings while they fought. He’d come without them the first day. When she’d protested that it was an unnecessary precaution, his face had assumed a mask of innocence. “I promised Giddon, didn’t I?” he’d said, and that fight had begun with Po ducking, and laughing, as Katsa swung at his face.

Scourges assumed authority they had not been granted. They made a carefully reasoned decision to kill in greater numbers than were absolutely necessary to save themselves and the innocents who needed their protection. Scourges transgressed against social and sacred order... Scourges themselves are always scourged.

It is no use trying to assume again the state of innocence and acceptance of the animal or the child. This time it has to be conscious. To circle about in such gladness as his, is the effort of a whole lifetime.

A “race to innocence” is what occurs when individuals assume that they are innocent of complicity in structures of domination and oppression.25 This concept captures the understandable assumption made by new immigrants or children of recent immigrants to any country. They cannot be responsible, they assume, for what occurred in their adopted country’s past. Neither are those who are already citizens guilty, even if they are descendants of slave owners, Indian killers, or Andrew Jackson himself. Yet, in a settler society that has not come to terms with its past, whatever historical trauma was entailed in settling the land affects the assumptions and behavior of living generations at any given time, including immigrants and the children of recent immigrants.

Nevermore to delay life End the beginning Devise the bravest perpendicular To the squarest circle. Assume the ending. If He lies broken who broke Him? Assume your innocence! If you are broken who broke you? Assume His innocence! The perpendicular of heaven and death! Now the wounded may rest. If He—on your breast. If you—on His brest. Rest, rest.

Madonna Kolbenschlag suggest that if an awakened woman forgoes innocence and denial, if she refuses to make compromises with herself and defect to patriarchy, then her only option becomes deviance. I chose deviance. I chose to be a loving dissident. To dance the dance of dissidence. This stance can be assumed from the inside or the outside. Whichever place we choose, the important thing is having the sustained will to be, act, and speak from the ground of our feminine souls.

I liked all the children in my class. Back then, I think we all just tacitly assumed that we were equal. That we were all in the same boat. We didn’t really think about our different genders, races or classes. We just co-existed, like one big family.

You can call it innocence or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: She assumed that everyone else was just like her. Evidence to the contrary found nowhere to lodge, like a book on chaos theory in a library that didn’t have a physics section.

What would happen if some invisible gas leak in the school cafeteria caused diminished brain activity in students? Can we safely assume district officials would evacuate the school until further notice? That parents would be up in arms? That media and lawyers would descend in droves to collect statements from the innocent victims? Can we assume that the community would not gather together en masse on Friday nights to eat hot dogs and watch the gas leak?

Connection terminated. I'm sorry to interrupt you, Elizabeth. If you still even remember that name. But I'm afraid you've been misinformed. You are not here to receive a gift. Nor, have you been called here by the individual you assume. Although, you have indeed been called. You have all been called here. Into a labyrinth of sounds and smells, misdirection and misfortune. A labyrinth with no exit. A maze with no prize. You don't even realize that you are trapped. Your lust of blood has driven you in endless circles. Chasing the cries of children in some unseen chamber, always seeming so near. Yet somehow out of reach. But, you will never find them. None of you will. This is where your story ends. And to you, my brave volunteer, who somehow found this job listing not intended for you. Although, there was a way out planned for you, I have a feeling that's not what you want. I have a feeling that you are right where you want to be. I am remaining as well. I am nearby. This place will not be remembered and the memory of everything that started this, can finally begin to fade away. As the agony of every tragedy should. And to you monsters trapped in the corridors. Be still. And give up your spirits. They don't belong to you. As for most of you, I believe there is peace and perhaps, warm, waiting for you after the smoke clears. Although, for one of you, the darkest pit of Hell has opened to swallow you whole. So, don't keep the Devil waiting, friend. My daughter, if you can hear me, I knew you would return as well. It's in your nature to protect the innocent. I'm sorry that on that day, the day you were shut out and left to die, no one was there to lift you up in their arms, the way you lifted others into yours. And then, what became of you, I should have known, you wouldn't be content to disappear. Not my daughter. I couldn't save you then. So, let me save you now. It's time to rest, for you, and for those you have carried in your arms... This ends. For all of us. End communication.

In the writings of many contemporary psychics and mystics (e.g., Gopi Krishna, Shri Rajneesh, Frannie Steiger, John White, Hal Lindsay, and several dozen others whose names I have mercifully forgotten) there is a repeated prediction that the Earth is about to be afflicted with unprecedented calamities, including every possible type of natural catastrophe from Earthquakes to pole shifts. Most of humanity will be destroyed, these seers inform us cheerfully. This cataclysm is referred to, by many of them, as "the Great Purification" or "the Great Cleansing," and is supposed to be a punishment for our sins. I find the morality and theology of this Doomsday Brigade highly questionable. A large part of the Native American population was exterminated in the 19th century; I cannot regard that as a "Great Cleansing" or believe that the Indians were being punished for their sins. Nor can I think of Hitler's death camps, or Hiroshima or Nagasaki, as "Great Purifications." And I can't make myself believe that the millions killed by plagues, cancers, natural catastrophes, etc., throughout history were all singled out by some Cosmic Intelligence for punishment, while the survivors were preserved due to their virtues. To accept the idea of "God" implicit in such views is logically to hold that everybody hit by a car deserved it, and we should not try to get him to a hospital and save his life, since "God" wants him dead. I don't know who are the worst sinners on this planet, but I am quite sure that if a Higher Intelligence wanted to exterminate them, It would find a very precise method of locating each one separately. After all, even Lee Harvey Oswald -- assuming the official version of the Kennedy assassination -- only hit one innocent bystander while aiming at JFK. To assume that Divinity would employ earthquakes and pole shifts to "get" (say) Richard Nixon, carelessly murdering millions of innocent children and harmless old ladies and dogs and cats in the process, is absolutely and ineluctably to state that your idea of God is of a cosmic imbecile.

Some of my friends in the other nations would argue that, on occasion, truth and beauty must be defended with ugliness. They would claim a gardener who nurtures a flower so others can enjoy it bloom for a few moments must spend much time with their hands buried in dirt.” Kyoshi would have chosen a less pleasant word than dirt. “What do you believe then?” Jinpa smiled sadly. “I believe I have to make peace with my own choices, just like everyone else.” The tint of pain in his expression reminded her too much of Kelsang for her to believe Jinpa was at complete peace with himself. Outsiders enviously and condescendingly assumed Airbenders lived in a state of innocent bliss, but that didn’t give the monks and nuns enough credit for their inner strength. From what Kyoshi knew, belonging to the wandering nation meant a constant struggle with your own morals against the world’s.

I’m a virgin, okay?” There was a moment of silence while I assume he was struggling to understand the connection. Then he spoke. “I’m not prejudiced against anyone.

We kissed for two hours. Eventually, I led him into my bedroom and pulled off both of our shirts. He stopped me. "This might sound weird; it's not typical guy response." I froze, suddenly awkward. "I mean, if I didn't feel the way I do with you I would be all for it, but I kind of think maybe it would be good to wait. I've rushed into sex, and had it be a mistake." He shrugged apologetically. "I mean, if it's safe to assume you are experiencing the same date that I am, then I think we will have time." I was a little flabbergasted and more than a little embarrassed. How could I explain that the idea sounded like a huge relief to me, that I didn't quite understand where the impulse to start taking my clothes off came from? I had had the same experience. I rarely enjoyed first-time sex with partners, largely because I usually did it before I really knew or trusted them. Here was where the difference between what I knew and did remained wide. The shame I felt wash over me was tinged with that hatred of my own innocence. Was I still so green? So unconfident? Had I gone straight out of the extremity of sex work to the innocence of my adolescence? Where was my self-knowledge? Still, I was relieved. "Of course. I agree totally." I clutched my T-shirt to my chest and smiled at him. "And yes, I am on the same date you are on." "I thought so," he said. "I mean, I don't think you can feel like this when it's not reciprocal." He left at 2:00 A.M. and called me at 11:00 the next morning to schedule our second date.

I don't think anybody'd remember and certainly do know everybody'd lie. The reason I'm so bitter and, as I said, 'in anguish,' nowadays, or one of the reasons, is that everybody's begun to lie and because they lie they assume that I lie too: they overlook the fact that I remember very well many things (of course I've forgotten some...) I do believe that lying is a sin, unless it's innocent lie based on lack of memory, certainly the giving of false evidence and being a false witness is a mortal sin, but what I mean is, insofar as lying has become so prevalent in the world today (thanks to Marxian Dialectical propaganda and Comitern techniques among other causes) that, when a man tells the truth, everybody, looking in the mirror and seeing a liar... ...like those LSD heads in newspaper photographs who sit in parks gazing rapturously at the sky to show how high they are when they're only victims momentarily of a contraction of the blood vessels and nerves in the brain that causes the illusion...

she's used to clients and new colleagues looking past her to the person they are clearly expecting to meet she will stride up to the client, shake his hand firmly (yet femininely), while looking him warmly (yet confidently) in the eye and smiling innocently, and delivering her name unto him with perfectly clipped Received Pronunciation, showing off her pretty (thank-god-they're-not-too-thick) lips coated in a discreet shade of pink, baring her perfect teeth as he adjusts to the collision between reality and expectation, and tries not to show it while she assumes control of the situation and the conversation

I am reminded, now, of one of these complaints of the cookery made by a passenger. The coffee had been steadily growing more and more execrable for the space of three weeks, till at last it had ceased to be coffee altogether and had assumed the nature of mere discolored water—so this person said. He said it was so weak that it was transparent an inch in depth around the edge of the cup. As he approached the table one morning he saw the transparent edge—by means of his extraordinary vision long before he got to his seat. He went back and complained in a high-handed way to Capt. Duncan. He said the coffee was disgraceful. The Captain showed his. It seemed tolerably good. The incipient mutineer was more outraged than ever, then, at what he denounced as the partiality shown the captain’s table over the other tables in the ship. He flourished back and got his cup and set it down triumphantly, and said: “Just try that mixture once, Captain Duncan.” He smelt it—tasted it—smiled benignantly—then said: “It is inferior—for coffee—but it is pretty fair tea." The humbled mutineer smelt it, tasted it, and returned to his seat. He had made an egregious ass of himself before the whole ship. He did it no more. After that he took things as they came. That was me.

Nevertheless, it frustrated him that after this exhaustive investigation his opponents still rehashed the stale charges of misconduct. He had learned a lesson about propaganda in politics and mused wearily that “no character, however upright, is a match for constantly reiterated attacks, however false.” If a charge was made often enough, people assumed in the end “that a person so often accused cannot be entirely innocent.

Scourges assumed authority they had not been granted. They made a carefully reasoned decision to kill in greater numbers than were absolutely necessary to save themselves and the innocents who needed their protection.

But what is it, to be an artist? Nothing shows up the general human dislike of thinking, and man's innate craving to be comfortable, better than his attitude to this question. When these worthy people are affected by a work of art, they humbly say that that sort of thing is a 'gift.' And because in their innocence they assume that beautiful and uplifting results must have beautiful and uplifting causes, they never dream that the 'gift' in question is a very dubious affair and rests upon extremely sinister foundations. [...] Listen to this. I know a banker, grey-haired business man, who has a gift for writing stories. He employs this gift in his idle hours, and some of his stories are of the first rank. But despiteI say despite-this excellent gift his withers are by no means unwrung: on the contrary, he has had to serve a prison sentence, on anything but trifling grounds. Yes, it was actually first in prison that he became conscious of his gift, and his experiences as a convict are the main theme in all his works. One might be rash enough to conclude that a man has to be at home in some kind of jail in order to become a poet.

she will stride up to the client, shake his hand firmly (yet femininely), while looking him warmly (yet confidently) in the eye and smiling innocently, and delivering her name unto him with perfectly clipped Received Pronunciation, showing off her pretty (thank-god-they're-not-too-thick) lips coated in a discreet shade of pink, baring her perfect teeth as he adjusts to the collision between reality and expectation, and tries not to show it while she assumes control of the situation and conversation.

In other words, contrary to what many people assume, we don't fall from a state of complete innocence into sin individually, on our own. But Adam, who in effect was acting as an agent and proxy for the entire human race, plunged all of humanity at once into sin. In the words of Romans 5:19, By one man's disobedience many were made sinners".Every one of Adam's progeny was condemned by his actions. And that is why the whole human race is said to be guilty because of what he did, and not because of what Eve did.

The freedom to abandon one’s community, knowing one will be welcomed in faraway lands; the freedom to shift back and forth between social structures, depending on the time of year; the freedom to disobey authorities without consequence – all appear to have been simply assumed among our distant ancestors, even if most people find them barely conceivable today. Humans may not have begun their history in a state of primordial innocence, but they do appear to have begun it with a self-conscious aversion to being told what to do.15

When a woman innocently shares upset feelings or explores out loud the problems of her day, a man mistakenly assumes she is looking for some expert advice. He puts on his Mr. Fix-It hat and begins giving advice; this is his way of showing love and of trying to help.

A nation ignorant of the equal benefits of liberty and law, must be awed by the flashes of arbitrary power: the cruelty of a despot will assume the character of justice; his profusion, of liberality; his obstinacy, of firmness. If the most reasonable excuse be rejected, few acts of obedience will be found impossible; and guilt must tremble, where innocence cannot always be secure. The tranquillity of the people, and the discipline of the troops, were best maintained by perpetual action in the field; war was the trade of the Janizaries;

The Nazis, he had written in his latest, "are wedded to a sort of aesthetico-moral fallacy, which is that if a man has blond hair, blue eyes and strong features, then he will also be brave, loyal, intelligent and so on. They truly believe that goodness has some causal relationship with beauty. Which is idiotic, yes, but no more idiotic than you are, Egon. When you see a girl like Adele Hitler with an innocent, pretty face, can you honestly tell me you don't assume she must be an angelic person? Even though it makes about as much sense as astrology.

Already they're the objects of narrow sideways looks, as if they had something to do with it; already they've assumed the cornered, angry air of the consciously innocent. I'm sure they're blameless, but they're alive, and whoever's left alive gets blamed. That's the rule in things like this. Unfair, but there it is.

I'm sorry, I don't understand. Could you tell me more about this 'profanity'?" Mrs. Miller nodded at my dictionary. "I'll assume you don't need a definition. Perhaps you'd prefer an example?" "That would be so helpful, thank you very much." Without missing a beat, Mrs. Miller rattled off a stream of obscenities so fully and completely unexpected that I fell off my chair. Mothers were defiled, their male and female children, as well as any and all offspring who just happened to be born out of wedlock. AS for the sacred union that produced these innocent babes, the pertinent bodily appendages were catalogued by a list of names so profoundly scurrilous that a grizzled marine, conceived in a brothel and dying of a disease he contracted in one, would've wished he'd been born as smooth as a Ken doll. The act itself was invoked with such a verity of incestuous, scatological, bestial, and just plain bizarre variations that that same marine would've given up on the Ken doll fantasy, and wished instead that all life had been confined to a single-cell stage, forever free of taint of mitosis, let alone procreation. Somewhere during the course of all this I noticed I'd snapped my pencil in half, and now I used the two ends to gouge out my brain. "Guhhhhhh guhhhhh guhhhhhh guhhhhh guhhhhh," I said, by which I meant: "You have shattered whatever tattered remnants of pedagogical propriety I still possessed, and my tender young mind has broken beneath the strain." Nervously, I climbed back into my chair, the two halves of my pencil sticking out of ears like an arrow that had shot clean through my head. Mrs. Miller allowed herself a small self-congratulatory smile.

When I stopped viewing girls as potential girlfriends and started treating them as sisters in Christ, I discovered the richness of true friendship. When I stopped worrying about who I was going to marry and began to trust God’s timing, I uncovered the incredible potential of serving God as a single. . . . I believe the time has come for Christians, male and female, to own up to the mess we’ve left behind in our selfish pursuit of short-term romance. Dating may seem an innocent game, but as I see it, we are sinning against each other. What excuse will we have when God asks us to account for our actions and attitudes in relationships? If God sees a sparrow fall (Matthew 10:29), do you think He could possibly overlook the broken hearts and scarred emotions we cause in relationships based on selfishness? Everyone around us may be playing the dating game. But at the end of our lives, we won’t answer to everyone. We’ll answer to God. . . . Long before Seventeen magazine ever gave teenagers tips on dating, people did things very differently. At the turn of the twentieth century, a guy and girl became romantically involved only if they planned to marry. If a young man spent time at a girl’s home, family and friends assumed that he intended to propose to her. But shifting attitudes in culture and the arrival of the automobile brought radical changes. The new “rules” allowed people to indulge in all the thrills of romantic love without having any intention of marriage. Author Beth Bailey documents these changes in a book whose title, From Front Porch to Backseat, says everything about the difference in society’s attitude when dating became the norm. Love and romance became things people could enjoy solely for their recreational value. Though much has changed since the 1920s, the tendency of dating relationships to move toward intimacy without commitment remains very much the same. . . . Many of the attitudes and practices of today’s dating relationships conflict with the lifestyle of smart love God wants us to live.

The local political and religious officials were more than ready to take action and began rounding up suspects at once. Anyone who was accused of witchcraft by at least three witnesses was arrested. Those who confessed were burned at the stake; those who refused to confess were tortured until they said what their accusers wanted to hear and then were burned. Clerk of the court Johannes Fründ, the author of the most detailed record of the Valais witch trials, noted with amazement that some of the accused kept insisting on their innocence until they died under torture; like most of the officials involved in the trials, he assumed that every person accused of witchcraft must be guilty.

If we read the text alone, assuming that the word 'cross' can only derive its meaning from the later death of Jesus, then its appearance in the text must be an anachronism read back into the story after the crucifixion. This conclusion becomes unnecessary if the cross, being the standard punishment for insurrection or for the refusal to confess Caesar's lordship, already had a clear definition in the listener's awareness. 'Take up your cross' may even have been a standard phrase of Zealot recruiting. The disciple's cross is not a metaphor for self-mortification or even generally innocent suffering; 'if you follow me, your fate will be like mine, the fate of a revolutionary. You cannot follow me without facing that fate.

and they can be prosecuted or sued if they are caught using intentional deception to defraud you into giving up a mere twenty dollars. So it stands to reason, innocent people frequently assume, that there must be some similar rules restricting the ability of the police to trick you into giving up your most precious constitutional rights. I would not blame you for thinking such a thing, but you would be dead wrong. The

One of the most irritating features of Mr de Valera’s behaviour at this time was, having used every device of a practised politician to gain his point, having shown himself relentless and unscrupulous in taking every advantage of generous opponents, he would adopt a tone of injured innocence when his shots failed, and assume the pose of a simple, sensitive man, too guileless and gentle for this rough world of politics.108

I love a man in uniform. And he's got a big hose. I'm getting hot just looking at it." "I can hear you," Sam called out. "This is an office. Please keep the discussion to a PG level." "How about you keep your dirty R-rated thoughts to yourself," Daisy retorted. "We're looking at a picture of a firefighter holding a hose on the street to cool people off on a hot summer day. In my innocence, I can't even imagine what you were thinking." "I thought you were using a metaphor," Sam said. "But clearly I shouldn't assume..." Layla glanced down at the picture. The firefighter was bare chested save for the suspenders holding up his fireman pants, which were unzipped in a way that suggested he wasn't on his way to a fire. "That's... some hose." "I can still hear you." "He's jealous," Daisy whispered. "He wishes he could have a big hose that makes women wet.

If you're looking for an Inspiration, then I think Rahul Mahajan is a perfect example for all the fainthearted people out there who fear to show their talent. Many people around us assume themselves as "not so special" person and people will laugh at them if they perform in public. I've seen Rahul Mahajan in a reality show of dancing, which is no way related to him. He is been asked to dance various dance forms, but the fact is he doesn't have the body language to perform like a dancer. His dances make people laugh, and his mistakes in the performances are taken as humor. Rahul never thinks about the results or what the audiences are thinking and keep on performing. Not only that but he is a favorite contestant of all the judges and the audiences too. The power is his honesty, hardwork, innocence, ego-less and he enjoys every bit of his performance to the core. I think that’s the reason why he's successful and lives in the heart of the Indian Audiences. Hats off to your spirit Rahul Mahajan. :)

Henry Fielding, a highly successful satiric dramatist until the introduction of censorship in 1737, began his novel-writing career with Shamela, a pastiche of Pamela, which humorously attacked the hypocritical morality which that novel displayed. Joseph Andrews (1742) was also intended as a kind of parody of Richardson; but Fielding found that his novels were taking on a moral life of their own, and he developed his own highly personal narrative style - humorous and ironic, with an omniscient narrative presence controlling the lives and destinies of his characters. Fielding focuses more on male characters and manners than Richardson. In doing so, he creates a new kind of hero in his novels. Joseph Andrews is chaste, while Tom Jones in Tom Jones (1749) is quite the opposite. Tom is the model of the young foundling enjoying his freedom (to travel, to have relationships with women, to enjoy sensual experience) until his true origins are discovered. When he matures, he assumes his social responsibilities and marries the woman he has 'always' loved, who has, of course, like a mediaeval crusader's beloved, been waiting faithfully for him. Both of these heroes are types, representatives of their sex. There is a picaresque journey from innocence to experience, from freedom to responsibility. It is a rewriting of male roles to suit the society of the time. The hero no longer makes a crusade to the Holy Land, but the crusade is a personal one, with chivalry learned on the way, and adventure replacing self-sacrifice and battle.

Discreet as you are, Rohan, one can’t help but notice how ardently you are pursued. It seems you hold quite an appeal for the ladies of London. And from all appearances, you’ve taken full advantage of what’s been offered.” Cam stared at him without expression. “Pardon, but are you leading to an actual point, my lord?” Leaning back in his chair, St. Vincent made a temple of his elegant hands and regarded Cam steadily. “Since you’ve had no problem with lack of desire in the past, I can only assume that, as happens with other appetites, yours has been sated with an overabundance of sameness. A bit of novelty may be just the thing.” Considering the statement, which actually made sense, Cam wondered if the notorious former rake had ever been tempted to stray. Having known Evie since childhood, when she had come to visit her widowed father at the club from time to time, Cam felt as protective of her as if she’d been his younger sister. No one would have paired the gentle-natured Evie with such a libertine. And perhaps no one had been as surprised as St. Vincent himself to discover their marriage of convenience had turned into a passionate love match. “What of married life?” Cam asked softly. “Does it eventually become an overabundance of sameness?” St. Vincent’s expression changed, the light blue eyes warming at the thought of his wife. “It has become clear to me that with the right woman, one can never have enough. I would welcome an overabundance of such bliss—but I doubt such a thing is mortally possible.” Closing the account book with a decisive thud, he stood from the desk. “If you’ll excuse me, Rohan, I’ll bid you good night.” “What about finishing the accounting?” “I’ll leave the rest in your capable hands.” At Cam’s scowl, St. Vincent shrugged innocently. “Rohan, one of us is an unmarried man with superior mathematical abilities and no prospects for the evening. The other is a confirmed lecher in an amorous mood, with a willing and nubile young wife waiting at home. Who do you think should do the damned account books?” And, with a nonchalant wave, St. Vincent had left the office.

From a mathematical point of view, however, trust is hard to quantify. That's a challenge for people building models. Sadly, it's far easier to keep counting arrests, to build models that assume we're birds of a feather and treat us as such. Innocent people surrounded by criminals get treated badly, and criminals surrounded by law-abiding public get a pass. And because of the strong correlation between poverty and reported crime, the poor continue to get caught up in the digital dragnets. The rest of us barely have to think about them.

Seeing a real victim-survivor behave in such a way is a rarity. Most of us can't face the attention or the judgement, the shame is often so big it swallows our innocence, and we don't have a tangible vision of justice any more, let alone the will to trust others with a vulnerability so crippling it distorts our worldview. I don't know if Brie ever was a victim, and it's not my place to assume, but I knew for certain that this was a pack of lies, painfully damaging to those of us who had experienced it for real. With this display, she affected the beliefs of others, harming the fight to be heard.

There is another typical feature of ideological pursuit: the victims supported by ideologues are always innocent (and it is sometimes true that victims are innocent), and the perpetrators are always evil (evil perpetrators are also not in short supply). But the fact that there exist genuine victims and perpetrators provides no excuse to make low-resolution, blanket statements about the global locale of blameless victimization and evil perpetration—particularly of the type that does not take the presumed innocence of the accused firmly into account. No group guilt should be assumed—and certainly not of the multigenerational kind.

I have since thought a great deal about how people are able to maintain two attitudes in their minds at once. Take the colonel: He had come fresh from a world of machetes, road gangs, and random death and yet was able to have a civilized conversation with a hotel manager over a glass of beer and let himself be talked out of committing another murder. He had a soft side and a hard side and neither was in absolute control of his actions. It would have been dangerous to assume that he was this way or that way at any given point in the day. It was like those Nazi concentration camp guards who could come home from a day manning the gas chambers and be able to play games with their children, put a Bach record on the turntable, and make love to their wives before getting up to kill to more innocents. And this was not the exception—this was the rule. The cousin of brutality is a terrifying normalcy. So I tried never to see these men in terms of black or white. I saw them instead in degrees of soft and hard. It was the soft that I was trying to locate inside them; once I could get my fingers into it, the advantage was mine. If sitting down with abhorrent people and treating them as friends is what it took to get through to that soft place, then I was more than happy to pour the Scotch.

An Act for establishing religious Freedom. Section 1 Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free; That all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and therefore are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, That the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time; That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions, which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical; That even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the Ministry those temporary rewards, which, proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind; That our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry, That therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right, That it tends only to corrupt the principles of that very Religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments those who will externally profess and conform to it; That though indeed, these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; That to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; That it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; And finally, that Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

The first symptom of true love in a young man is timidity; in a young girl, boldness. This is surprising, yet nothing is more simple. It is the two sexes tending to approach each other and assuming, each the other’s qualities. That day, Cosette’s glance drove Marius beside himself, and Marius’ glance set Cosette to trembling. Marius went away confident, and Cosette uneasy. From that day forth, they adored each other. The first thing that Cosette felt was a confused and profound melancholy. It seemed to her that her soul had become black since the day before. She no longer recognized it. The whiteness of soul in young girls, which is composed of coldness and gayety, resembles snow. It melts in love, which is its sun. Cosette did not know what love was. She had never heard the word uttered in its terrestrial sense. She did not know what name to give to what she now felt. Is any one the less ill because one does not know the name of one’s malady? She loved with all the more passion because she loved ignorantly. She did not know whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, useful or dangerous, eternal or temporary, allowable or prohibited; she loved. She would have been greatly astonished, had any one said to her: ‘You do not sleep? But that is forbidden! You do not eat? Why, that is very bad! You have oppressions and palpitations of the heart? That must not be! You blush and turn pale, when a certain being clad in black appears at the end of a certain green walk? But that is abominable!’ She would not have understood, and she would have replied: ‘What fault is there of mine in a matter in which I have no power and of which I know nothing?’ It turned out that the love which presented itself was exactly suited to the state of her soul. It was admiration at a distance, the deification of a stranger. It was the apparition of youth to youth, the dream of nights become a reality yet remaining a dream, the longed-for phantom realized and made flesh at last, but having as yet, neither name, nor fault, nor spot, nor exigence, nor defect; in a word, the distant lover who lingered in the ideal, a chimaera with a form. Any nearer and more palpable meeting would have alarmed Cosette at this first stage, when she was still half immersed in the exaggerated mists of the cloister. She had all the fears of children and all the fears of nuns combined. The spirit of the convent, with which she had been permeated for the space of five years, was still in the process of slow evaporation from her person, and made everything tremble around her. In this situation he was not a lover, he was not even an admirer, he was a vision. She set herself to adoring Marius as something charming, luminous, and impossible. As extreme innocence borders on extreme coquetry, she smiled at him with all frankness. Every day, she looked forward to the hour for their walk with impatience, she found Marius there, she felt herself unspeakably happy, and thought in all sincerity that she was expressing her whole thought when she said to Jean Valjean:— ‘What a delicious garden that Luxembourg is!’ Marius and Cosette were in the dark as to one another. They did not address each other, they did not salute each other, they did not know each other; they saw each other; and like stars of heaven which are separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing at each other. It was thus that Cosette gradually became a woman and developed, beautiful and loving, with a consciousness of beauty and in ignorance of love.

You know, I've never known much about fashion, living in the country and all," she said innocently. "What sort of hat would a lady like myself wear to an afternoon tea outside, in the garden, with other ladies? Assuming I'm ever invited, of course." "Oh, that's easy... a lovely straw number, with a wide brim, en grecque curls if you're dining amongst the ruins, or piles of flowers and feathers, and tipped, just so..." Belle allowed herself a little smile. "No one has worn hats like that, even in this remote part of the world, for at lest ten years. Not even Madame Bussard has pulled one out of her own wardrobe recently. And she is very thrifty with her accessories. So whatever happened here must have happened at least a decade ago.

The freedom to abandon one’s community, knowing one will be welcomed in faraway lands; the freedom to shift back and forth between social structures, depending on the time of year; the freedom to disobey authorities without consequence – all appear to have been simply assumed among our distant ancestors, even if most people find them barely conceivable today. Humans may not have begun their history in a state of primordial innocence, but they do appear to have begun it with a self-conscious aversion to being told what to do.15 If this is so, we can at least refine our initial question: the real puzzle is not when chiefs, or even kings and queens, first appeared, but rather when it was no longer possible simply to laugh them out of court.

When it is stated in Genesis that God said to Adam, "Only from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you must not eat," it follows as a matter of course that Adam really has not understood this word, for how could he understand the difference between good and evil when this distinction would follow as a consequence of the enjoyment of the fruit? When it is assumed that the prohibition awakens the desire, one acquires knowledge instead of ignorance, and in that case Adam must have had a knowledge of freedom, because the desire was to use it. The explanation is therefore subsequent. The prohibition induces in him anxiety, for the prohibition awakens in him freedom's possibility. What passed by innocence as the nothing of anxiety has now entered into Adam, and here again it is a nothing -the anxious possibility of

Well, she would marry a man who didn't need or want her fortune. Mr. Pinter didn't fall into that category. And given how blank his expression became as his gaze met hers, she'd been right to be skeptical. he would never be interested in her in that way. He confirmed it by saying, with his usual formality, "I doubt any man would consider your ladyship unacceptable as a wife." Oh, when he turned all hoity-toity, she could just murder him. "Then we agree that the gentlemen in question would find me satisfactory," she said, matching his cold tone. "So I don't see why you assume they'd be unfaithful." "Some men are unfaithful no matter how beautiful their wives are," Mr. Pinter growled. He thought her beautiful? There she went again, reading too much into his words. He was only making a point. "But you have no reason to believe that these gentleman would be. Unless there's some dark secret you already know about them that I do not?" Glancing away, he muttered a curse under his breath. "No." "Then here's your chance to find out the truth about their characters. Because I prefer facts to opinions. And I was under the impression that you do, too." Take that, Mr. Pinter! Hoist by your own petard. The man always insisted on sticking to the facts. And he was well aware that she'd caught him out, for he scowled, then crossed his arms over his chest. His rather impressive chest, from what she could tell beneath his black coat and plain buff waistcoat. "I can't believe I'm the only person who would object to these gentlemen," he said. "What about your grandmother? Have you consulted her?" She lifted her eyes heavenward. He was being surprisingly resistant to her plans. "I don't need to. Every time one of them asks to dance with me, she beams. She's forever urging me to smile at them or attempt flirtation. And if they so much as press my hand or take my for a stroll, she quizzes me with great glee on what was said and done." "She's been letting you go out on private strolls with these scoundrels?" Mr. Pinter said in sheer outrage. "They aren't scoundrels." "I swear to God, you're a lamb among the wolves," he muttered. That image of her, so unlike how she saw herself, made her laugh. "I've spent half my life in the company of my brothers. Every time Gabe went to shoot, I went with him. At every house party that involved his friends, I was urged to show off my abilities with a rifle. I think I know how to handle a man, Mr. Pinter." His glittering gaze bored into her. "There's a vast difference between gamboling about in your brother's company with a group of his friends and letting a rakehell like Devonmont or a devilish foreigner like Basto stroll alone with you down some dark garden path." A blush heated her cheeks. "I didn't mean strolls of that sort, sir. I meant daytime walks about our gardens and such, with servants in plain view. All perfectly innocent." He snorted. "I doubt it will stay that way." "Oh, for heaven's sake, why are you being so stubborn? You know I must marry. Why do you even care whom I choose?" "I don't care," he protested. "I'm merely thinking of how much of my time will be wasted investigating suitors I already know are unacceptable." She let out an exasperated breath. Of course. With him, it was always about money. Heaven forbid he should waste his time helping her.

Is Belhaven the other man?” he asked gently. The color drained from Elizabeth’s face, and it was answer enough. “Damnation!” expostulated the earl, grimacing in revulsion. “The very thought of an innocent like yourself being offered to that old-“ “I’ve dissuaded him,” Elizabeth hastily assured him, but she was profoundly touched that the earl, who knew her so slightly, was angered on her behalf. “You’re certain?” “I think so.” After a moment’s hesitation he nodded and leaned back in his chair, his disturbingly astute gaze on her face while a slow smile drifted across his own. “May I ask how you accomplished it?” “I’d truly rather you wouldn’t.” Again he nodded, but his smile widened and his blue eyes lit with amusement. “Would I be far off the mark if I were to assume you used the same tactics on Marchman that I think you’ve used here?” “I’m-I’m not certain I understand your question,” Elizabeth replied warily, but his grin was contagious, and she found herself having to bite her lip to stop from smiling back at him. “Well, either the interest you exhibited in fishing two years ago was real, or it was your courteous way of putting me at ease and letting me talk about the things that interested me. If the former is true, then I can only assume your terror of fish yesterday isn’t quite…shall we say…as profound as you would have had me believe?” They looked at each other, he with a knowing smile, Elizabeth with brimming laughter. “Perhaps it is not quite so profound, my lord.” His eyes positively twinkled. “Would you care to make a try for that trout you cost me this morning? He’s still out there taunting me, you know.” Elizabeth burst out laughing, and the earl joined her. When their laughter had died away Elizabeth looked across the desk at him, feeling as if they were truly friends.

You’re a fiend! You enjoy torturing me, making me tell you lies, just so that you’ll leave me in peace.” This second blow was even more terrible for Swann than the first. Never had he supposed it to have been so recent an event, hidden from his eyes that had been too innocent to discern it, not in a past which he had never known, but in the course of evenings which he so well remembered, which he had lived through with Odette, of which he had supposed himself to have such an intimate, such an exhaustive knowledge, and which now assumed, retrospectively, an aspect of ugliness and deceit. In the midst of them, suddenly, a gaping chasm had opened: that moment on the island in the Bois de Boulogne. Without being intelligent, Odette had the charm of naturalness. She had recounted, she had acted the little scene with such simplicity that Swann, as he gasped for breath, could vividly see it: Odette yawning, the “rock, there,” . . . He could hear her answer—alas, how gaily—“I’ve heard that tale before!

The premise beneath all of these spiritualities is that sin has not intruded upon the relation between the sacred and human nature, that human nature itself offers access--indeed, we assume, unblemished access--to God, that human nature itself mediates the divine. Gone are the days when people understood that an avalanche has fallen between God and human beings, that human nature retains its shape as made in the image of God but has lost its relationship to God and stands in pained alienation from him. It is no small anomaly that we have arrived at this point. How can we be so knowledgeable about evil in the world and so innocent about sin in ourselves? Is it not strange that we who see so much tragedy through television, who are so knowledgeable of the darkness in our world, who pride ourselves on being able to stare with clear eyes and no denials at what is messy, untidy, ugly, and painful, are also those who know so little about sin in ourselves? The reason, of course, is that we have lost the moral world in which sin is alone understood. The

Hagen understood that the policeman believes in law and order in a curiously innocent way. He believes in it more than does the public he serves. Law and order is, after all, the magic from which he derives his power, individual power which he cherishes as nearly all men cherish individual power. And yet there is always the smoldering resentment against the public he serves. They are at the same time his ward and his prey. As wards they are ungrateful, abusive and demanding. As prey they are slippery and dangerous, full of guile. As soon as one is in the policeman’s clutches the mechanism of the society the policeman defends marshals all its resources to cheat him of his prize. The fix is put in by politicians. Judges give lenient suspended sentences to the worst hoodlums. Governors of the States and the President of the United States himself give full pardons, assuming that respected lawyers have not already won his acquittal. After a time the cop learns. Why should he not collect the fees these hoodlums are paying? He needs it more. His children, why should they not go to college? Why shouldn’t his wife shop in more expensive places? Why shouldn’t he himself get the sun with a winter vacation in Florida? After all, he risks his life and that is no joke.

I only have the story in two parts from Miss Throckmorton-Jones. The first time she spoke she was under the influence of laudanum. Today she was under the influence of what I can only describe as the most formidable temper I’ve ever seen. However, while I may not have the complete story, I certainly have the gist of it, and if half what I’ve heard is true, then it’s obvious that you are completely without either a heart or a conscience! My own heart breaks when I imagine Elizabeth enduring what she has for nearly two years. When I think of how forgiving of you she has been-“ “What did the woman tell you?” Ian interrupted shortly, turning and walking over to the window. His apparent lack of concern so enraged the vicar that he surged to his feet and stalked over to Ian’s side, glowering at his profile. “She told me you ruined Elizabeth Cameron’s reputation beyond recall,” he snapped bitterly. “She told me that you convinced that innocent girl-who’d never been away from her country home until a few weeks before meeting you-that she should meet you in a secluded cottage, and later in a greenhouse. She told me that the scene was witnessed by individuals who made great haste to spread the gossip, and that it was all over the city in a matter of days. She told me Elizabeth’s fiancé heard of it and withdrew his offer because of you. When he did that, society assumed Elizabeth’s character must indeed be of the blackest nature, and she was summarily dropped by the ton. She told me that a few days later Elizabeth’s brother fled England to escape their creditors, who would have been paid off when Elizabeth made an advantageous marriage, and that he’s never returned.” With grim satisfaction the vicar observed the muscle that was beginning to twitch in Ian’s rigid jaw. “She told me the reason for Elizabeth’s going to London in the first place had been the necessity for making such a marriage-and that you destroyed any chance of that ever happening. Which is why that child will now have to marry a man you describe as a lecher three times her age!” Satisfied that his verbal shots were finding their mark, he fired his final, most killing around. “As a result of everything you have done, that brave, beautiful girl has been living in shamed seclusion for nearly two years. Her house, of which she spoke with such love, has been stripped of its valuables by creditors. I congratulate you, Ian. You have made an innocent girl into an impoverished leper! And all because she fell in love with you on sight. Knowing what I now know of you, I can only wonder what she saw in you!

The DUCE diverted funds intended for the Fiume adventure, and used them for His own election campaign. He was arrested for the illegal possession of arms, sent parcel bombs to the Archbishop of Milan and its mayor, and after election was, as is well-known, responsible for the assassination of Di Vagno and Matteoti. Since then He has been responsible for the murders of Don Mizzoni Amendola, the Rosselli brothers, and the journalist Piero Gobetti, quite apart from the hundreds who have been the victims of His squadistri in Ferrara, Ravenna and Trieste, and the thousands who have perished in foreign places whose conquest was useless and pointless. We Italians remain eternally grateful for this, and consider that so much violence has made us a superior race, just as the introduction of revolvers into Parliament and the complete destruction of constitutional democracy have raised our institutions to the greatest possible heights of civilisation. Since the illegal seizure of power, Italy has known an average of five acts of political violence per diem, the DUCE has decreed that 1922 is the new Annus Domini, and He was pretended to be a Catholic in order to dupe the Holy Father into supporting Him against the Communists, even though He really is one Himself. He has completely suborned the press by wrecking the premises of dissident newspapers and journals. In 1923 he invaded Corfu for no apparent reason, and was forced to withdraw by the League of Nations. In 1924 He gerrymandered the elections, and He has oppressed minorities in the Tyrol and the North-East. He sent our soldiers to take part in the rape of Somalia and Libya, drenching their hands in the blood of innocents, He has doubled the number of the bureaucracy in order to tame the bourgeoisie, He has abolished local government, interfered with the judiciary, and purportedly has divinely stopped the flow of lava on Mt Etna by a mere act of will. He has struck Napoleonic attitudes whilst permitting Himself to be used to advertise Perugina chocolates, He has shaved his head because He is ashamed to be seen to be going bald, He has been obliged to hire a tutor to teach Him table manners, He has introduced the Roman salute as a more hygienic alternative to the handshake, He pretends not to need spectacles, He has a repertoire of only two facial expression, He stands on a concealed podium whilst making speeches because He is so short, He pretends to have studied economics with Pareto, and He has assumed infallibility and encouraged the people to carry His image in marches, as though He were a saint. He is a saint, of course. He has (and who are we to disagree?) declared Himself greater than Aristotle, Kant, Aquinas, Dante, Michelangelo, Washington, Lincoln, and Bonaparte, and He has appointed ministers to serve Him who are all sycophants, renegades, racketeers, placemen, and shorter than He is. He is afraid of the Evil Eye and has abolished the second person singular as a form of address. He has caused Toscanini to be beaten up for refusing to play 'Giovinezza', and He has appointed academicians to prove that all great inventions were originally Italian and that Shakespeare was the pseudonym of an Italian poet. He has built a road through the site of the forum, demolishing fifteen ancient churches, and has ordered a statue of Hercules, eighty metres high, which will have His own visage, and which so far consists of a part of the face and one gigantic foot, and which cannot be completed because it has already used up one hundred tons of metal.

3. When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother’s eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it. Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy—if you know your job he will not notice the immense improbability of the assumption. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her. As he cannot see or hear himself, this is easily managed. 4. In civilised life domestic hatred usually expresses itself by saying things which would appear quite harmless on paper (the words are not offensive) but in such a voice, or at such a moment, that they are not far short of a blow in the face. To keep this game up you and Glubose must see to it that each of these two fools has a sort of double standard. Your patient must demand that all his own utterances are to be taken at their face value and judged simply on the actual words, while at the same time judging all his mother’s utterances with the fullest and most over-sensitive interpretation of the tone and the context and the suspected intention. She must be encouraged to do the same to him. Hence from every quarrel they can both go away convinced, or very nearly convinced, that they are quite innocent. You know the kind of thing: ‘I simply ask her what time dinner will be and she flies into a temper.’ Once this habit is well established you have the delightful situation of a human saying things with the express purpose of offending and yet having a grievance when offence is taken.

Geraldine nodded and headed for Mrs. Armstrong's lawn. I felt sorry for her in her carrot pajamas, having no idea what was really going on. I followed the other girls and stood behind the shrubs. Mrs. Armstrong's house was ginormous. Her house was even bigger than Aunt Jeanie's. There was one light on upstairs. I figured that was the bedroom. The rest of the house was dark. Geraldine went to the far end of the yard and removed a can of spray paint from the bag. She shook it and began to spray. "She's such an idiot," Ava said, taking out her phone to record Geraldine's act of vandalism. "You guys are going to get her into so much trouble," I said. "So what?" Hannah replied. "She got us in trouble at the soup kitchen, it's not like she's ever going to become a Silver Rose anyway. She's totally wasting her time." Geraldine slowly made her way up and down the huge yard carefully spraying the grass. It would take her forever to complete it and there wasn't nearly enough spray paint. "Hey, guys!" Geraldine yelled from across the lawn. "How about I spray a rose in the grass? That would be cool, right?" I cringed. The light on upstairs meant the Armstrongs were still awake. Geraldine was about to get us all caught. "O-M-G," Hannah moaned. "Shhhh," Summer hissed, but Geraldine kept screaming at the top of her lungs. "Well, what do you guys think?" My heart dropped into my stomach as a light from downstairs clicked on. We ducked behind the hedges and froze. "Who's out there?" called a man's voice. I couldn't see him and I couldn't see Geraldine. I heard the door close and I peeked over the hedges. "He went back inside," I whispered, ducking back down. At that moment something went shk-shk-shk and Geraldine screamed. We all stood to see what was happening. Someone had turned the sprinklers on and Geraldine was getting soaked. The door flew open and I heard Mrs. Armstrong's voice followed by a dog's vicious barking. "Get 'em, Killer!" "Killer!" Ava screamed and we all took off running down the street with a soggy Geraldine trailing behind us. I was faster than all the other girls. I had no intentions of being gobbled up by a dog named Killer. We stopped running when we got to Ava's street and Killer was nowhere in sight. We walked back to the house at a normal pace. "So, did I prove myself to the sisterhood?" Geraldine asked. Hannah turned to her. "Are you kidding me? Your yelling woke them up, you moron. We got chased down the street by a dog because of you." Geraldine frowned and looked down at the ground. Hopefully what I had told her before about the girls not being her friends was starting to settle in. Inside all the other girls wanted to know what had happened. Ava was giving them the gory details when a knock on the door interrupted her. It was Mrs. Armstrong. She had on a black bathrobe and her hair was in curlers. I chuckled to myself because I was used to seeing her look absolutely perfect. We all sat on our sleeping bags looking as innocent as possible except for Geraldine who still stood awkwardly by the door, dripping wet. Mrs. Armstrong cleared her throat. "Someone has just vandalized my lawn with spray paint. Silver spray paint. Since I know it's a tradition for the Silver Roses to pull a prank on me on the night of the retreat, I'm going to assume it was one of you. More specifically, the one who's soaking wet right now." All eyes went to Geraldine. She looked at the ground and said nothing. What could she possibly say to defend herself? She even had silver spray paint on her fingers. Mrs. Armstrong looked her up and down. "Young lady, this is your second strike and that's two strikes too many. Your bid to become a Junior Silver Rose is for the second time hereby revoked." Geraldine's shoulders drooped, but most of the girls were smirking. This had been their plan all along and they had accomplished it.

Blood pressure check!” The doorknob rattled, as if the nurse were intending just to walk in, but the lock held, thank God. The nurse knocked again. “Oh, shit,” Gina breathed, laughing as she scrambled off of him. She reached to remove the condom they’d just used, encountered . . . him, and met his eyes. But then she scooped her clothes off the floor and ran into the bathroom. “Mr. Bhagat?” The nurse knocked on the door again. Even louder this time. “Are you all right?” Oh, shit, indeed. “Come in,” Max called as he pulled up the blanket and leaned on the button that put his bed back up into a sitting position. The same control device had a “call nurse” button as well as the clearly marked one that would unlock the door. “It’s locked,” the nurse called back, as well he knew. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, as he wiped off his face with the edge of the sheet. Sweat much in bed, all alone, Mr. Bhagat? “I must’ve . . . Here, let me figure out how to . . .” He took an extra second to smooth his hair, his pajama top, and then, praying that the nurse had a cold and couldn’t smell the scent of sex that lingered in the air, he hit the release. “Please don’t lock your door during the day,” the woman scolded him as she came into the room, around to the side of his bed. It was Debra Forsythe, a woman around his age, whom Max had met briefly at his check-in. She had been on her way home to deal with some crisis with her kids, and hadn’t been happy then, either. “And not at night either,” she added, “until you’ve been here a few days.” “Sorry.” He gave her an apologetic smile, hanging on to it as the woman gazed at him through narrowed eyes. She didn’t say anything, she just wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his arm, and pumped it a little too full of air—ow—as Gina opened the bathroom door. “Did I hear someone at the door?” she asked brightly. “Oh, hi. Debbie, right?” “Debra.” She glanced at Gina, and then back, her disgust for Max apparent in the tightness of her lips. But then she focused on the gauge, stethoscope to his arm. Gina came out into the room, crossing around behind the nurse, making a face at him that meant . . .? Max sent her a questioning look, and she flashed him. She just lifted her skirt and gave him a quick but total eyeful. Which meant . . . Ah, Christ. The nurse turned to glare at Gina, who quickly straightened up from searching the floor. What was it with him and missing underwear? Gina smiled sweetly. “His blood pressure should be nice and low. He’s very relaxed—he just had a massage.” “You know, I didn’t peg you for a troublemaker when you checked in yesterday,” Debra said to Max, as she wrote his numbers on the chart. Gina was back to scanning the floor, but again, she straightened up innocently when the nurse turned toward her. “I think you’re probably looking for this.” Debra leaned over and . . . Gina’s panties dangled off the edge of her pen. They’d been on the floor, right at the woman’s sensibly clad feet. “Oops,” Gina said. Max could tell that she was mortified, but only because he knew her so well. She forced an even sunnier smile, and attempted to explain. “It was just . . . he was in the hospital for so long and . . .” “And men have needs,” Debra droned, clearly unmoved. “Believe me, I’ve heard it all before.” “No, actually,” Gina said, still trying to turn this into something they could all laugh about, “I have needs.” But it was obvious that this nurse hadn’t laughed since 1985. “Then maybe you should find someone your own age to play with. A professional hockey player just arrived. He’s in the east wing. Second floor.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Lots of money. Just your type, I’m sure.” “Excuse me?” Gina wasn’t going to let one go past. She may not have been wearing any panties, but her Long Island attitude now waved around her like a superhero’s cape. She even assumed the battle position, hands on her hips.

Thus He dethroned the king of Israel by the king of Assyria, and, in turn, the king of Assyria by the king of Babylon, the king of Babylon by the king of Persia, the king of Persia by Alexander, the king in Greece, the Greek kingdom by the Romans, the Romans by the Goths and the Turks. And if the world stands long enough, the Turks, too, will find someone to knock them off. That is the way it goes on and on, both in great and in small governments; both among emperors and kings we behold a constant seating and unseating. The whole world with its governments appears to be God’s cavalry tournament, with all of His horsemen stabbing and unseating each other. The rule is: Whoever lies prostrate, lies prostrate; whoever is mounted, is mounted. And all of this happens because of their injustice and their violence, and because it is their fault whenever evils and injustices prevail in a country. The devil, the supreme prince of the world, goads them on, so that they do not use the sword, committed to them by God, aright, just as the world also misuses all the other gifts of God. And yet the sword is necessary, as eating and drinking are. But because of their abuse of it God constantly wrests the sword from the fist of one and gives it to another. Sword and government always remain in the world, but the persons sitting on thrones must continue to topple and tumble as they deserve. But that is what deceived the Jews and hardened their hearts, so that they did not believe Habakkuk. Since they did not commit adultery and had no idols at the time, they assumed that they were godly and had a gracious God. Consequently they were not at all expecting God’s wrath. That is peculiar of these people down to the present day, as it is of all hypocrites and work-righteous: they always imagine that they above all others are the dear children. They cannot believe that they are deserving of wrath. They say, as we read in Micah 2:7: “Should this be said, O house of Jacob? Is the Spirit of the Lord impatient? etc.” For if they had acknowledged that they are sinners, they would have obeyed Habakkuk. They would have reformed fearfully and humbly, as the Ninevites did, and averted the punishment. But since they did not do this, it is certain that they regarded Habakkuk as a fool and idle preacher but themselves as godly, as innocent, and as the true children of God. And this is what we see our own clergy do even today. Amid the most terrible sins and blasphemies they think that they are serving God and are pleasing to Him.

I wanted to apologize.” His gaze lifted from her bosom. He remembered those breasts in his hands. “For what?” “For deceiving you as I did. I misunderstood the nature of our relationship and behaved like a spoiled little girl. It was a terrible mistake and I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.” A terrible mistake? A mistake to be sure, but terrible? “There is nothing to forgive,” he replied with a tight smile. “We were both at fault.” “Yes,” she agreed with a smile of her own. “You are right. Can we be friends again?” “We never stopped.” At least that much was true. He might have played the fool, might have taken advantage of her, but he never ceased caring for her. He never would. Rose practically sighed in relief. Grey had to struggle to keep his eyes on her face. “Good. I’m so glad you feel that way. Because I do so want your approval when I find the man I’m going to marry.” Grey’s lips seized, stuck in a parody of good humor. “The choice is ultimately yours, Rose.” She waved a gloved hand. “Oh, I know that, but your opinion meant so much to Papa, and since he isn’t here to guide me, I would be so honored if you would accept that burden as well as the others you’ve so obligingly undertaken.” Help her pick a husband? Was this some kind of cruel joke? What next, did she want his blessing? She took both of his hands in hers. “I know this is rather premature, but next to Papa you have been the most important man in my life. I wonder…” She bit her top lip. “If you would consider acting in Papa’s stead and giving me away when the time comes?” He’d sling her over his shoulder and run her all the way to Gretna Green if it meant putting an end to this torture! “I would be honored.” He made the promise because he knew whomever she married wouldn’t allow him to keep it. No man in his right mind would want Grey at his wedding, let along handling his bride. Was it relief or consternation that lit her lovely face? “Oh, good. I was afraid perhaps you wouldn’t, given your fear of going out into society.” Grey scowled. Fear? Back to being a coward again was he? “Whatever gave you that notion?” She looked genuinely perplexed. “Well, the other day Kellan told me how awful your reputation had become before your attack. I assumed your shame over that to be why you avoid going out into public now.” “You assume wrong.” He'd never spoken to her with such a cold tone in all the years he'd known her. "I had no idea your opinion of me had sunk so low. And as one who has also been bandied about by gossips I would think you would know better than to believe everything you hear, no matter how much you might like the source." Now she appeared hurt. Doe-like eyes widened. "My opinion of you is as high as it ever was! I'm simply trying to say that I understand why you choose to hide-" "You think I'm hiding?" A vein in his temple throbbed. Innocent confusion met his gaze. "Aren't you?" "I avoid society because I despise it," he informed her tightly. "I would have thought you'd know that about me after all these years." She smiled sweetly. "I think my recent behavior has proven that I don't know you that well at all. After all, I obviously did not achieve my goal in seducing you, did I?" Christ Almighty. The girl knew how to turn his world arse over appetite. "There's no shame in being embarrassed, Grey. I know you regret the past, and I understand how difficult it would be for you to reenter society with that regret handing over you head." "Rose, I am not embarrassed, and I am not hiding. I shun society because I despise it. I hate the false kindness and the rules and the hypocrisy of it. Do you understand what I am saying? It is because of society that I have this." He pointed at the side of his face where the ragged scar ran.

No matter what philosophical standpoint people may adopt nowadays, from every point of view the falsity of the world in which we think we live is the most certain and firmest thing which our eyes are still capable of apprehending: - for that we find reason after reason, which would like to entice us into conjectures about a fraudulent principle in the "essence of things." But anyone who makes our very thinking, that is, "the spirit," responsible for the falsity of the world - an honourable solution which every conscious or unconscious advocatus dei [pleader for god] uses -: whoever takes this world, together with space, time, form, and movement as a false inference, such a person would at least have good ground finally to learn to be distrustful of all thinking itself. Wouldn’t it be the case that thinking has played the greatest of all tricks on us up to this point? And what guarantee would there be that thinking would not continue to do what it has always done? In all seriousness: the innocence of thinkers has something touching, something inspiring reverence, which permits them even today still to present themselves before consciousness with the request that it give them honest answers: for example, to the question whether it is "real," and why it really keeps itself so absolutely separate from the outer world, and similar sorts of questions. The belief in "immediate certainties" is a moral naivete which brings honour to us philosophers - but we should not be "merely moral" men! Setting aside morality, this belief is a stupidity, which brings us little honour! It may be the case that in bourgeois life the constant willingness to suspect is considered a sign of a "bad character" and thus belongs among those things thought unwise. Here among us, beyond the bourgeois world and its affirmations and denials - what is there to stop us from being unwise and saying the philosopher has an absolute right to a "bad character," as the being who up to this point on earth has always been fooled the best - today he has the duty to be suspicious, to glance around maliciously from every depth of suspicion. Forgive me the joke of this gloomy grimace and way of expressing myself. For a long time ago I myself learned to think very differently about and make different evaluations of deceiving and being deceived, and I keep ready at least a couple of digs in the ribs for the blind anger with which philosophers themselves resist being deceived. Why not? It is nothing more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than appearance. That claim is even the most poorly demonstrated assumption there is in the world. People should at least concede this much: there would be no life at all if not on the basis of appearances and assessments from perspectives. And if people, with the virtuous enthusiasm and foolishness of some philosophers, wanted to do away entirely with the "apparent world," assuming, of course, you could do that, well then at least nothing would remain any more of your "truth" either! In fact, what compels us generally to the assumption that there is an essential opposition between "true" and "false"? Is it not enough to assume degrees of appearance and, as it were, lighter and darker shadows and tones for the way things appear - different valeurs [values], to use the language of painters? Why could the world about which we have some concern - not be a fiction? And if someone then asks "But doesn’t an author belong to a fiction?" could he not be fully answered with Why? Doesn’t this "belong to" perhaps belong to the fiction? Is it then forbidden to be a little ironic about the subject as well as about the predicate and the object? Is the philosopher not permitted to rise above a faith in grammar? All due respect to governesses, but might it not be time for philosophy to renounce faith in governesses?-

I landed a bit too fast and stumbled in my unlaced sneakers before slamming face first into Darius’s chest as he lurched forward to catch me. “Sorry,” I laughed as I looked up at him with a grin and he fell still as he helped me steady myself. “What?” I asked, trying to blink the sleep out of my eyes. “You’ve never smiled at me like that before,” he said in a rough voice, reaching out to brush some tangled strands of black hair out of my face. “Shut up, I smile at you all the time,” I replied as heat touched my cheeks and I tried to run my fingers through my knotty hair. Really should have taken a minute to brush it dumbass. Let’s hope he assumes it’s from flying. “Not like that you don’t,” Darius countered, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth too as his gaze ran over me. “You look…cute.” “I don’t know what you mean. And I don’t do cute.” Darius snorted at me. “You look like you got dressed in the dark…” “Gee thanks, any more observations, Sherlock?” I asked, rolling my eyes at him but I was still grinning so there wasn’t much bite with my snark. “Well… You’re not wearing any makeup.” “I…woke up late, so-” “I like it,” he said, his smile growing as he looked me over. “You look all sleepy and innocent. I could almost imagine you just woke up in my bed.” I was definitely goddamn blushing now and thanks to my lack of bronzer he was clearly well aware of it. The sky was darkening overhead already as we lingered, but I fought the stars for just another moment. “If I’d spent the night in your bed, there wouldn’t have been anything innocent about it,” I taunted to get him back onto safer, less mortifying topics of conversation. Like sex. “As much as I ache for the feeling of your body against mine – and I really fucking do – I think if I was allowed a single cheat against this curse that keeps us apart, I’d just want to be able hold you in my arms,” he replied. “Just to wake up with you there, knowing you were safe.” My heart pounded at his words, but a crash of thunder from the heavens stopped me from replying. I offered him a frustrated smile and turned away from him as I began my run. Darius followed behind me, far enough back to allow the clouds to scatter again and I tried not to dwell on the disappointment that lingered in me as I upped my pace. Did I just shoot over here at the speed of light without brushing my hair or putting any makeup on rather than risk missing out on our run? I shook my head at myself as I tried to figure out what was going on here. I’d been purposefully ignoring this question up until now, but I seriously needed to consider what I was doing. Running with him every morning, messaging him every night. Exchanging little looks whenever we ended up in the same place and thinking about him way too often. This felt a hell of a lot like the start of something instead of the end of it, but that wasn’t possible. Even if he wanted it. Even if I wanted it. We couldn’t have it. The damn stars wouldn’t allow it. My mind twisted around and around as we ran on and I cursed the stars out with everything I had. But why was I doing that? Hadn’t I made my mind up about this? Hadn’t I already made the only decision I could? Darius might have been showing me more of himself now, he might have stopped hurting me and be trying to change but had he done enough to make up for all the pain he’d caused me? When I really thought about it, I still wasn’t sure. But I was sure that he made me smile when he messaged me, that I looked for him whenever I arrived in a room, that he seemed to be trying to do everything he could to set things right. And that I fantasised about him more than I had about any man in all my life. Even Tom Hardy. Even. Tom. Hardy. Fuck it. We ran around Aqua Lake, circling the shore and heading on into The Wailing Wood. Darius kept pace behind me in silence like always, but I decided to drop back. (Tory)

The Mosaic legend of the Fall of Man has preserved an ancient picture representing the origin and consequences of this disunion. The incidents of the legend form the basis of an essential article of the creed, the doctrine of original sin in man and his consequent need of succour. It may be well at the commencement of logic to examine the story which treats of the origin and the bearings of the very knowledge which logic has to discuss. For, though philosophy must not allow herself to be overawed by religion, or accept the position of existence on sufferance, she cannot afford to neglect these popular conceptions. The tales and allegories of religion, which have enjoyed for thousands of years the veneration of nations, are not to be set aside as antiquated even now. Upon a closer inspection of the story of the Fall we find, as was already said, that it exemplifies the universal bearings of knowledge upon the spiritual life. In its instinctive and natural stage, spiritual life wears the garb of innocence and confiding simplicity; but the very essence of spirit implies the absorption of this immediate condition in something higher. The spiritual is distinguished from the natural, and more especially from the animal, life, in the circumstance that it does not continue a mere stream of tendency, but sunders itself to self-realisation. But this position of severed life has in its turn to be suppressed, and the spirit has by its own act to win its way to concord again. The final concord then is spiritual; that is, the principle of restoration is found in thought, and thought only. The hand that inflicts the wound is also the hand which heals it. We are told in our story that Adam and Eve, the first human beings, the types of humanity, were placed in a garden, where grew a tree of life and a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God, it is said, had forbidden them to eat of the fruit of this latter tree: of the tree of life for the present nothing further is said. These words evidently assume that man is not intended to seek knowledge, and ought to remain in the state of innocence. Other meditative races, it may be remarked, have held the same belief that the primitive state of mankind was one of innocence and harmony. Now all this is to a certain extent correct. The disunion that appears throughout humanity is not a condition to rest in. But it is a mistake to regard the natural and immediate harmony as the right state. The mind is not mere instinct: on the contrary, it essentially involves the tendency to reasoning and meditation. Childlike innocence no doubt has in it something fascinating and attractive: but only because it reminds us of what the spirit must win for itself. The harmoniousness of childhood is a gift from the hand of nature: the second harmony must spring from the labour and culture of the spirit. And so the words of Christ, ‘Except ye become as little children’, etc., are very far from telling us that we must always remain children. Again, we find in the narrative of Moses that the occasion which led man to leave his natural unity is attributed to solicitation from without. The serpent was the tempter. But the truth is, that the step into opposition, the awakening of consciousness, follows from the very nature of man; and the same history repeats itself in every son of Adam. The serpent represents likeness to God as consisting in the knowledge of good and evil: and it is just this knowledge in which man participates when he breaks with the unity of his instinctive being and eats of the forbidden fruit. The first reflection of awakened consciousness in men told them that they were naked. This is a naive and profound trait. For the sense of shame bears evidence to the separation of man from his natural and sensuous life. The beasts never get so far as this separation, and they feel no shame. And it is in the human feeling of shame that we are to seek the spiritual and moral origin origin of dress.

Guidelines for ROE 1. When on post, mobile, or foot patrol, keep loaded magazine in weapon, bolt closed, weapon on safe, no round in the chamber. 2. Do not chamber a round unless told to do so by a commissioned officer unless you must act in immediate self-defense where deadly force is authorized. 3. Keep ammo for crew-served weapons readily available but not loaded. Weapon is on safe. 4. Call local forces to assist in self-defense effort. Notify headquarters. 5. Use only minimum degree of force to accomplish any mission. 6. Stop the use of force when it is no longer needed to accomplish the mission. 7. If you receive effective hostile fire, direct your fire at the source. If possible, use friendly snipers. 8. Respect civilian property; do not attack it unless absolutely necessary to protect friendly forces. 9. Protect innocent civilians from harm. 10. Respect and protect recognized medical agencies such as Red Cross, Red Crescent, etc. Col. Jim Mead’s 32nd MAU was relieved by Col. Tom Stokes’s 24th MAU on October 30, 1982. The transition was seamless, morale was high, and all hands assumed their responsibilities enthusiastically. Colonel Stokes also honored the Ministry of Defense’s request to help train the LAF. The government of Lebanon (GOL) introduced conscription, and young men from all over Lebanon answered the call to colors. The various religious groups—the Christians, Druze, Sunnis, and Shiites—were being trained and integrated into the Lebanese Army. Although the U.S. Army already had an ongoing training mission in effect, it was viewed that the Marines’ additional training would quickly improve the LAF’s combat capabilities. The results of the training courses led to their expansion, particularly among the noncommissioned officers (NCOs). The religious integration of the LAF was a major goal of its commander, Gen. Ibrahim Tannous, who wanted to produce a true national army. The Marine training was contributing to that end.

To put it plainly, truth is not the principal objective of a criminal trial. This is why Americans do not assume that acquittal in a criminal trial proves that the defendant is innocent. As tempting as it is to borrow the techniques of criminal defense lawyers, they are a poor strategy for showing that Christianity or any other set of beliefs is true.

5. You can’t prove a lot of things that it would be lunacy to deny—for instance, that human reason is trustworthy, that it is not being hypnotized by a demon at every moment. Of course that thought is ridiculous, but can you prove it isn’t true? No, because you’d have to use your reason to prove it, and that means trusting the validity of reason, and that is assuming the very thing you’re supposed to be proving, “begging the question”. If a thousand prisoners are all on trial, no one of them has the right to be the judge and declare all one thousand innocent. If all acts of reasoning are on trial and need to be justified, no one of them has the right to do that justifying. So you can’t prove the validity of reasoning. So not everything has to be proved, for not everything can be proved. So the demand to prove the existence of spirit, and the refusal to believe it just because it isn’t proved, is an unfair demand.

Later, the Pentagon indicated that the relatively new terrorist group named al Qaeda, formed eight years before, was responsible for the Khobar Towers attack on U. S. military personnel. In 1998 U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya were bombed, killing 224, and wounding over 4,000. On October 12, 2000, the USS Cole was attacked, killing 56. On September 11, 2001, al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four U.S. commercial aircraft, bringing down both World Trade Center Towers, and crashing into the Pentagon, with the fourth assumed to be headed for either the U.S. Capitol or the White House, brought down by passengers in Pennsylvania. 3,000 died. America’s innocence regarding Jihadists’ plan to conquer the world for Allah also died at the same time.

In view of the cataclysmic changes that followed, it is significant that the initiative in bringing about the release of nuclear energy, the central event in the recrudescence of the megamachine in modern form, was taken, not by the central government, but by a small group of physicists. Not less significant is the fact that these advocates of nuclear power were themselves unusually humane and morally sensitive people, notably, Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, Harold Urey. These were the last scientists one would accuse of seeking to establish a new priesthood capable of assuming autocratic authority and wielding satanic power. Those unpleasant characteristics, which have become all too evident in later collaborators and successors, were derived from the new instruments commanded by the megamachine and the dehumanized concepts that were rapidly incorporated in its whole working program. As for the initiators of the atom bomb, it was their innocence that concealed from them, at least in the initial stages, the dreadful ultimate consequences of their effort.

Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of Mary Shelley, who wrote the first and most persuasive feminist tract, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. “Women are every where in [a] deplorable state,” she would write; “for, in order to preserve their innocence, as ignorance is courteously termed, truth is hidden from them, and they are made to assume an artificial character before their faculties have acquired any strength. Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

The smile he gave me was warm, but he was still wounded by his mother's death. There was a hollowness in his eyes: a black hole of shocked grieving that swallowed all the questions and released no answers. When he returned to his work, cutting lengths of coconut-fibre rope for the men to tie around bamboo bracing poles, his young face assumed a numb expression. I knew that expression: I sometimes caught it, by chance, in the mirror: the way we look when the part of happiness that's trusting and innocent is ripped away, and we blame ourselves, rightly or wrongly, for its loss.

I hope I have not upset you,” Mrs. Wattlesbrook said with an innocent smile. “I pride myself on matching each client with her perfect gentleman. But one cannot anticipate a woman’s every fancy, and so our talent pool runs deep. You understand?” “Very deep indeed.” Jane felt like a woman drowning, and she grasped for anything. And as it turned out, bald-faced lies are, temporarily anyway, impressively buoyant, so she said, “It will make the ending to my article all the more interesting.” “Your…your article?” Mrs. Wattlesbrook peered over her spectacles as if at a bug she would like to squash. “Mm-hm,” said Jane, lying extravagantly, outrageously, but also, she hoped, gracefully. “Surely you know I work for a magazine? The editor thought the story of my experience at Pembrook Park would be the perfect way to launch my move from graphic design to staff writer.” She had no intention of becoming a staff writer, and in fact the artist bug was raging through her blood now more than ever, but she just had to give Mrs. Wattlesbrook a good jab before departure. She was smarting enough to crave the reprieve that comes from fighting back. Mrs. Wattlesbrook twitched. That was satisfying. “And I’m sure you realize that since I’m a member of the press,” Jane said, “the confidentiality agreement you made me sign doesn’t apply.” Mrs. Wattlesbrook’s right eyebrow spasmed. Jane guessed that behind it ran her barrister’s phone number, which she would dial ASAP. Jane, of course, had been lying again. And wasn’t it fun! Mrs. Wattlesbrook appeared to be trying to moisten her mouth and failing. “I did not know…I would have…” “But you didn’t. The cell phone scandal, the dirty trick with Martin…You assumed that I was no one of influence. I guess I’m not. But my magazine has a circulation of over six hundred thousand. I wonder how many of those readers are in your preferred tax bracket? And I’m afraid my article won’t be glowing.” Jane curtsied in her jeans and turned to leave. “Oh, and, Mrs. Wattlesbrook?” “Yes, Jane, my dear?” the proprietress responded with a shaky, fawning voice. “What is Mr. Nobley’s first name?” Mrs. Wattlesbrook stared at her, blinkless. “It’s J…Jonathon.” Jane wagged her finger. “Nice try.

As innocent as the gesture was probably meant, it seemed to connect with some untouched spot in Maddie's soul. Oh, who was she kidding? She didn't use the word soul and the area she meant lay a tad further down south than where one would assume the soul to reside.

Assume that the Occupiers’ long roster of negations accurately described social and political reality in liberal democracies. Elected government isn’t accountable to the people, but is, in effect, a dictatorship of the corporations. While banks and businesses exploit workers and poison nature, the government they control represses freedom of expression, and murders and tortures innocents overseas. The rules of the democratic game are a trick, a ruse to conceal the oppression of women by men, of people of color by whites, of the bottom 99 by the top one percent. If that truly described life under capitalistic representative democracy, what would be a rational response? The political rebels of 2011 waffled on the question. Most were the children of the comfortable middle class, too interested in the drama of the moment to accept the implications of their own rhetoric. So they occupied a public space and they protested against the status quo, hoping that some external force—presumably, the government they so despised—would bring about change.

It was a bright humid night in Chiang Mai. Sangris and I trotted toward the night bazaar, stepping over the basketfuls of fried red chili that the sellers had spread out on the streets like open bowls of flowers. Finding a canal on the fringes of the market, we fed enormous gold carp. They curled through the water like submerged flames beneath the heavy tropical-black sky. Acting innocent, I bought him orange juice and watched his face change when he realized that the sellers had filled it with salt. A trick to prevent dehydration, I explained, and ran off cackling before he could get revenge. I wanted to go into the orchid farms and the butterfly gardens, but they were closed, and I refused his offer to break in (of course Sangris had a way of assuming that rules didn't apply to him, but, I said, they applied to me), so we walked along a half-lit street instead, warm greenness and humming insects all around us, and spent hours trying to catch the guppies that swarmed in innumerable pots by the roadsides. I was better at it: I could lift my hands out of the green-tinted, plant-filled water slowly, without startling the fish, and show him the flashes of yellow and orange and violet and red guppies that flickered through the water cupped in my palms like a strange and magical treasure.

Each long haircut is a passage. Hair is yet another kind of modulated frequency. Assume a state of grace in which all hairs were once distributed perfectly even, a time of innocence when they fell perfectly straight, all over the colonel’s head. Winds of the day, gestures of distraction, sweat, itchings, sudden surprises, three-foot falls at the edge of sleep, watched skies, remembered shames, all have since written on that perfect grating. Passing through it tonight, restructuring it, Eddie Pensiero is an agent of History.

P. M. Forni, cofounder of the Civility Project at Johns Hopkins University, speaks to this directly: “Thinking the best of others is a decent thing to do and a way of keeping a source of healthful innocence in our lives. When we approach others assuming that they are good, honest and sensitive, we often encourage them to be just that.

so banks were assumed guilty until proven innocent.

I was so tired of people assuming I was too fragile or innocent to protect myself. What was it about me that made them think I couldn’t handle hardship?

Rampart officers came to assume that all Latino and African American men between fifteen and fifty who had short hair and wore baggy pants were gang members, and that that warranted any efforts on their part to remove them from the streets. So they planted evidence to frame innocent people and lied in courts to gain convictions.

People swear they know the whole me. They tend to assume I’ve never been through anything cold since I exude a warm innocence.

I had to take a very early flight from St. Paul, Minnesota back to New York. There was only one place open for breakfast and the line was very long. The civilians in line were a minority. The rest were soldiers who appear to be on their way to one of Rome’s outposts. They look like this is their first “tour” and they had just finished training. I know the look of soldiers who have been to the battlefront. Weary and drained. Damaged machines. I used to see it back in Iraq on the faces of Iraqi soldiers who returned from the battlefront against Iran. These were mostly white, a few blacks and some with Latino last names. I realize that they, too, are products of Rome’s gigantic machine of inequality. Some look like they have retained some innocence on their faces, but even if, it will take a few weeks and they will assume their role. One of them had his fingers on the rail as he waited in line. He was moving his index finger back and forth. Was he already firing at Iraqi civilians?

When Lizzie Borden was acquitted of her parents’ murder in 1893, the people of New England were outraged — but Lizzie didn’t taunt the public for failing to convict her. She just moved into a nice house with her sister and became a recluse. A century later, Borden is “hated” by no one; anyone captivated by her life is predisposed to think about the murders from her perspective (and to hunt for any clue that might validate her improbable innocence). Over time, the public will grow to accept almost any terrible act committed by a celebrity; everything eventually becomes interesting to those who aren’t personally involved. But Simpson does not allow for uninvolvement. He exceeds the acceptable level of self-directed notoriety and changes the polarity of the event; by writing this book, he makes it seem like the worst part of Brown and Goldman’s murder was what happened to him, and that he perversely wants the world to remember that he killed them (even if he’s somehow internally convinced himself that he did not, which is what I always assumed during the trial). He keeps reminding people that he is famous because two other people are dead.

My own eating disorder had begun with a friendly diet competition between my mother and myself, each of us trying to drop five pounds to look better in a bathing suit. It had started lighthearted and innocently enough--as innocent as denying yourself sustenance can be, that is--until I'd been unable to stop, something in me latching onto that restriction in a way that I'd assume other addicts latch onto their drug of choice. Eventually I'd lost fifty pounds and my period and my hair, and I needed help or I was going to die.