Quotes about innocence
Friedrich Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra
I see you exhausted by poisonous flies I see you bleeding and torn at a hundred spots and your pride refuses even to be angry. They would have blood from you in all innocence blood is what bloodless souls crave - and therefore they sting in all innocence.
Joss Sheldon - The Little Voice
Her face lit up illuminated by the enlightenment of recognition and the innocence of surprise.
Mehmet Murat ildan -
A woman will always remain as princess as long as she keeps her childhood innocence and goodwill a man will always remain as prince as long as he keeps his childhood innocence and goodwill!
William Shakespeare - Macbeth
My hands are of your colour but I shame To wear a heart so white.
P.D. James - The Lighthouse
Dalgliesh was too experienced to assume that fear implied guilt it was often the most innocent who were the most terrified.
Nilesh Rathod - Destiny of Shattered Dreams
Children are like water they don't much care where the stream takes them. They do nothing to avoid or follow the contours.
G.K. Chesterton - Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State
Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin.
Dave Matthes - the Bastard
That's the beautiful thing about innocence even monsters have a pocketful of childhood memories with which to seek comfort with.
Tony Taylor - Counters
Today was the end of freedom. High school had fallen behind college loomed ahead. Tomorrow he traded freedom and Arizona for Colorado and discipline.
Albert Camus -
To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?
J.D. Stroube - Caged in Darkness
My parents had torn through my innocence and left me with a tar-like substance that was corrupting what was left of me. I could feel it at night slithering and curling around my soul as it slowly devoured me. It was draining my energy and replacing it with an evil I was afraid to confront.
Criss Jami - Killosophy
There's nothing more contagious than the laughter of young children it doesn't even have to matter what they're laughing about.
Martin Farquhar Tupper -
A babe in the house is a well-spring of pleasure, a messenger of peace and love, a resting place for innocence on earth, a link between angels and men.
Angelica Hopes - Whispers of a Soul
Grow in a way without losing much of our inner childlike deep senses embracing truthful, pure, simple relief of appreciation and gratitude.
Noël Coward - The Complete Verse of Noël Coward
An echo from the past when, innocentWe looked upon the present with delightAnd doubted not the future would be kinderAnd never knew the loneliness of night.
Dan Groat - An Enigmatic Escape: A Trilogy
It’s as close to true freedom as I have come. Not freedom of, but freedom from; freedom from the debris of life that piles up and forces us to dig and dig for our original self, who we were once upon a time, innocent and wonderfully naïve, as authentically pure as a human can be.
Stephen King -
And as I thought about the body of Ray Brower in this light- or lack of it- what I felt was not queasiness or fear that he would suddenly appear before us, a green and gibbering banshee whose purpose was to drive us back the way we had come before we could disturb his- its- peace,but a sudden and unexpected wash of pity that he should be so alone and so defenceless in the dark that was now coming over our side of the world.
Sol Luckman - Beginner's Luke
I relinquished myself to existence pure and simple, thinking absolutely nothing—as if my mind were merely an echo chamber for the music, as if it contained only ether or at most a vaguely pleasant odor as of roses preserved between the pages of a book, their significance long forgotten. The tongue of the road gobbled me up and I allowed myself to sink like a tasty mouthful all the way to the bottom of a marvelous, rejuvenating vacuity. Later, it would occur to me it’s the emptiness we mistakenly
Beverly Engel - The Right to Innocence
You cannot make yourself have a flashback, nor will you have one unless you are emotionally ready to remember something. Once remembered, the memory can help you to face more of the truth. You can then express your pent-up feelings about the memory and continue on your path to recovery. Think of the flashback as a clue to the next piece of work. No matter how painful, try to view it as a positive indication that you are now ready and willing to remember.
Anthony Ryan - Queen of Fire
Lust? I have no desire to incite lust in anyone."Veliss turned to her with a quizzical expression, her smile suddenly genuine. "Then I'm afraid you're in for a lifetime of disappointment.
Bo Bennett -
Those who improve with age embrace the power of personal growth and personal achievement and begin to replace youth with wisdom, innocence with understanding, and lack of purpose with self-actualization.
Roman Payne - The Wanderess
The comedy in our lives was those first few weeks we lived together in Paris: Our bodies desired one another, our souls opened for one another. We experienced all of the happiness and anguish of first love. Those first few weeks in Paris, we barely touched lips; yet the few times we did, it had the force of a collision of stars.
Samuel Richardson - Virtue Rewarded
O how can wicked men seem so steady and untouched with such black hearts, while poor innocents stand like malefactors before them!
Jojo Moyes - One Plus One
A face whose emotions had not yet been battered by experience.
Michel de Montaigne - The Complete Essays
To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom.
Voltaire - Zadig
It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.
G.K. Chesterton -
For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.
John Adams - The Portable John Adams
It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, 'whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,' and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.
Michael Connelly - The Lincoln Lawyer
Well, did he do it?"She always asked the irrelevant question. It didn't matter in terms of the strategy of the case whether the defendant "did it" or not. What mattered was the evidence against him -- the proof -- and if and how it could be neutralized. My job was to bury the proof, to color the proof a shade of gray. Gray was the color of reasonable doubt.
John Marshall -
The law does not expect a man to be prepared to defend every act of his life which may be suddenly and without notice alleged against him.
Paul Beatty - The Sellout
I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in a way the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief.
Lindsay Detwiler - Voice of Innocence
No matter how hard you try to be a good person, to make choices that will lead to success, nothing is promised. Even the good and the innocent are damned from time to time.
Jessi Kirby - Golden
Life is made of moments. and choices. Not all of them matter, or have any lasting impact. Skipping class in favor of a taste of freedom, picking a prom dress because of the way it transforms you into a princess in the mirror. Even the nights you steal away from an open window, tiptoe silent to the end of the driveway, where darkened headlights and the pull of something unknown beckon. These are all small choices, really. Insignificant as soon as they’re made. Innocent.But then.Then there’s a dif
William Blake -
For Mercy has a human heart;Pity, a human face;And Love, the human form divine:And Peace the human dress.Songs of InnocenceCruelty has a human heartAnd jealousy a human face,Terror the human form divine,And secrecy the human dress.The human dress is forged iron,The human form a fiery forge,The human face a furnace seal'd,The human heart its hungry gorge.Songs of Experience - This poem was discovered posthumously.
Haroutioun Bochnakian - The Human Consensus and The Ultimate Project Of Humanity
All life-forms are innocent, but man is the greatest innocent life-form that the universe has ever produced. Man is never created bad, as some primitive “revelations” claim. Man is both all-capable, and innocent; Man cannot have better attributes than the ones he already has. Once we defeat scarcity, the factor that has forced all our negative attributes into existence will be no more. Man’s nature is forged by scarcity. Man is a child of scarcity. Some men may currently live in abundance, even
Michael Connelly - The Concrete Blonde
If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents?
Anna Kavan - Asylum Piece
But to whom can one appeal when one does not even know where to find the judge? How can one ever hope to prove one's innocence when there is no means of knowing of what one has been accused? No, there's no justice for people like us in the world: all that we can do is to suffer as bravely as possible and put our oppressors to shame.
Anna Godbersen - Envy
Henry was thinking of the younger Holland sister of the way she could go from being an impetuous girl to a knowing woman in a few seconds and never lose the stars in her eyes.
Dean Koontz - Innocence
Anyway, in those years, I was happy, as to one extent or another I have always been happy. The forest was not a wilderness to me, but served instead as my private garden, comforting in spite of its vastness, and endlessly mysterious.The more familiar a place becomes, the more mysterious it becomes, as well, if you are alert to the truth of things. I have found this to be the case all of my life.
Alejandro Zambra -
Last night I walked for hours. It was as if I wanted to get lost down some unknown street. To get absolutely and happily lost. But there are moments when we can’t, when we don’t know how to lose our way. Even if we always go in the wrong direction. Even if we lose all our points of reference. Even if it begins to grow late and we feel the weight of morning as we advance. There are times when no matter how we try to find out what we don’t know, we can’t lose our way. And perhaps we long for the t
William Golding - Darkness Visible
Heaven lies around us in our infancy.
Emma Donoghue - Room
This is a bad story.”“Sorry. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.”“No, you should,” I say.“But—”“I don’t want there to be bad stories and me not know them.
Tony Taylor - Counters
There was no fear of sandpaper earth, no sense of danger from a bare-skinned spill, for the boy was a child—a six-foot, one-inch growing child who knew nothing of accident, injury, dismemberment, death—who would study those lessons tomorrow, thank you, but not today. Today, it would be sufficient to be wild and free.
Pierre Albert-Birot - The Cubist Poets in Paris: An Anthology
Who is that blond child laughing as he runs after his colored marbles? [my marbles]It's meAnd who is the poet writing this poem?That blond child who laughed as he ran after his colored marbles
Leo Tolstoy - Youth
what time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life?
Perry Nodelman -
To express nostalgia for a childhood we no longer share is to deny the actual significance and humanity of children.
Laurie Halse Anderson - Speak
There is something about Christmas that requires a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I wonder if could rent one for the holidays. When I was tiny we would by a real tree and stay up late drinking hot chocolate and finding just the right place for the special decorations. It seems like my parents gave up the magic when I figured out the Santa lie. Maybe I shouldn't have told them I knew where the presents really came from. It broke their hearts.
Tarif Naaz -
When I was a child, I used to look at the sky and wonder how were stars fixed on the canopy and why didn't they fall on Earth. I also wondered why they disappeared in day time. When I grew up, all my questions got answered, but I lost my innocence.
Joss Sheldon - The Little Voice
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.
Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind
When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.
Robert Frost -
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.And so I dream of going back to be.
Federico Fellini -
No matter what happens, always Keep your childhood innocence. It's the most important thing.
A.L. Collins - Twined
I just wanted things to be simple. I didn't understand why things had to be so complicated for all the grown ups. And I decided that if growing up meant things got confusing, then I would stay little forever. I would stay simple. But unfortunately everything around me did its best not to be. The world liked to be complex. It liked to twist, to distort. To bleed you dry of whatever feeling you could muster while still letting you hold on to your sanity so that you could experience heartache at it
F. Scott Fitzgerald - This Side of Paradise
Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it all over again. The matron doesn't want to repeat her girlhood, she wants to repeat her honeymoon. I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.
David A.R. White - Between Heaven and Hollywood: Chasing Your God-Given Dream
Young people sometimes use their innocence as an excuse to be unwise.
Jessie Burton - The Muse
She had never had a friend like this, in her private room, combing her hair, listening to her, talking about silly nonsense and the uselessness of one's parents; how the future was perfect, because they hadn't lived it yet.
Daphne du Maurier - Rebecca
I know that age, it's a particularly obstinate one, and a thousand bogies won't make you fear the future. A pity we can't change over.
P.K. Page - Hologram LP: A Book of Glosas
I had forgotten such innocence exists,/forgotten how it feels/ to live with neither calendars nor clocks
Valery Bryusov - The Silver Age of Russian Culture: An Anthology
He asked her, 'Why do you feel sorry for me, Old Woman?'The Old Woman stood beside him and looked out the window at the Garden, so beautiful, flowering and everywhere illuminated by the rays of the setting sun, and said, 'I feel sorry for you, dear Youth, because I know where you are gazing and what you are waiting for. I feel sorry for you and your mother.'Perhaps because of these words, or perhaps because of something else, there was a change in the Youth's mood. The Garden, flowering behind t
Valery Bryusov - The Silver Age of Russian Culture: An Anthology
The Old Woman asked, "Here you are, dear Youth, you are looking at the Garden and do not know that it is an evil Garden. Here you are waiting for the Beautiful Woman and do not know that her beauty is destructive. You have been living in my room for two years and never before have you become so engrossed as you have today. Apparently your turn has come too. Go away from the window before it is too late, do not breathe the evil fragrance of these deceitful flowers and do not wait for the Beautifu
Dean Koontz - Lightning
She blinked, sat up, and saw Chris in the bathroom doorway. He'd just gotten out the shower. His hair was damp, and he was dressed only in his briefs. The sight of his thin, boyish body - all ribs and elbows and knees - pulled at her heart, for he looked so innocent and vulnerable. He was so small adn fragile that she wondered how she could ever protect him, and renewed fear rose in her.
Roman Payne - The Wanderess
It is only in the peach innocence of youth that life is at its crest on top of the wheel. And there being only life, the young cling to it, they fear death... And they should! ...For they are in life.
Truddi Chase - When Rabbit Howls
I cherished her individuality, that spark of independence no child should lose to life's restrictions and parameters.
T.H. White - The Book of Merlyn
Grown-ups have developed an unpleasant habit of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish.
Ayn Rand -
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
Roman Payne - The Wanderess
Never had we ever kissed as lovers; if we touched lips it was as brother and sister. In one moment of emotion, our lips fell together by accident, but we quickly removed ourselves as though we were children touching glass with dirty hands.
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Lathe of Heaven
A machine is more blameless, more sinless even than any animal. It has no intentions whatsoever but our own.
Dorothy L. Sayers - Strong Poison
Parker looked distressed. He had confidence in Wimsey's judgment, and, in spite of his own interior certainty, he felt shaken."My dear man, where's the flaw in [this case]?""There isn't one ... There's nothing wrong about it at all, except that the girl's innocent.
Barack Obama -
He was an American character, one typical of men of his generation, men who embraced the notion of freedom and individualism and the open road without always knowing its price, and whose enthusiasms could as easily lead to the cowardice of McCarthyism as to the heroics of World War II. Men who were both dangerous and promising precisely because of their fundamental innocence; men prone, in the end, to disappointment.
Dean Koontz - Odd Interlude #1
Chronologically she is twelve, but emotionally she is older, and intellectually older still.
Anne Frank - The Diary of a Young Girl
The art of living. Isn't that a funny expression?
Brandon Stanton - Humans of New York
In an age of iPhones and Playstations, it's great to see that somebody's still rocking the bus-on-a-string.
Rick Remender - Vol. 1: Atomic Garden
Once upon a time there was a girl named Debbie Jacobs and a boy named Teddy Dennis.
Edna O'Brien - Saints and Sinners
If the Holy Communion touched my teeth, I thought that was a mortal sin
Chirag Tulsiani -
And so it is becomes important to protect the innocence in children, to prolong their understanding of the two worlds, because innocence like any other thing does not have a lastingness and so the idea is to bring them up beyond the concepts of truth and falsehood, leave it to time for it is a valuable teacher and ensure that they come out of it, all of it unscathed.
George R.R. Martin -
We're children. We're supposed to be childish.
Philip Pullman - The Golden Compass
Just as she was unaware of the hidden currents of politics running below the surface of College affairs, so the Scholars, for their part, would have been unable to see the rich seething stew of alliances and enmities and feuds and treaties which was a child’s life in Oxford. Children playing together: how pleasant to see! What could be more innocent and charming?
Angela Carter - The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
When I saw him look at me with lust, I dropped my eyes but, in glancing away from him, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. And I saw myself, suddenly, as he saw me, my pale face, the way the muscles in my neck stuck out like thin wire. I saw how much that cruel necklace became me. And, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away.
Anne Frank - The Diary of a Young Girl
Who else but me is ever going to read these letters?
Alan Alda - Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned
During the first day, curious at having outsiders among them, a long stream of inmates came over and talked with me. Remarkably, according to what they told me, nearly every inmate in the prison didn't do it. Several thousand people had been locked up unjustly and, by an incredible coincidence, all in the same prison.On the other hand, they knew an awful lot about how to knife somebody.
Jacqueline Kelly -
I had never seen a real live dead person.
Paul Fussell - The Great War and Modern Memory
Irony is the attendant of hope and the fuel of hope is innocence.
Mehmet Murat ildan -
When we see an innocent child, this is an ordinary thing; but when we see an innocent adult, this is an extraordinary thing!
Khaled Hosseini - A Thousand Splendid Suns
When Aziza first spotted Mariam in the morning, her eyes always sprang open, and she began mewling and squirming in her mother's grip. She thrust her arms toward Mariam, demanding to be held, her tiny hands opening and closing urgently, on her face a look of both adoration and quivering anxiety. "What a scene you're making," Laila would say, releasing her to crawl toward Mariam. "What a scene! Calm down. Khala Mariam isn't going anywhere. There she is, your aunt. See? Go on, now." As soon as she
David Foster Wallace -
I never, even for a moment, doubted what they’d told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can, unwittingly, be cruel: they cannot imagine doubt’s complete absence. They have forgotten.
Maria V. Snyder - Touch of Power
I remembered my little brother, Allyn, had appeared so innocent and angelic when he slept--similar to Kerrick. It must be a survival tactic. If Allyn hadn't looked so sweet, we would have killed him while he slept. He had been pure evil when he was awake--similar to Kerrick.
M.F. Moonzajer - HATRED AND MADNESS
Not every one of us sees the beauty of the stars and innocence of the moon by looking at sky.
A.G. Roemmers -
If you feel alone, and if your heart is pure and your eyes still shine with the wonder of a child's, perhaps as you read these pages you'll find that the stars are smiling on you once more, that you can hear them as though they were five hundred million little bells.
Jonathan Renshaw - Dawn of Wonder
Are you planning to kiss me?' Aedan asked.'No.' Emroy wrinkled a pimply nose.'Then why are you standing so close?' Aedan's tone was perfect innocence.
Immanuel Kant - Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
Innocence is a splendid thing, only it has the misfortune not to keep very well and to be easily misled.
Paul Bowles - The Spider's House
There's a little war in progress here. There won't be anything left of the place if it goes on at this rate." (But it's hard to feign innocence if you've eaten the apple, he reflected.) "And it looks to me as if it is going to go on, because the French aren't going to give in, and certainly the Arabs aren't, because they can't. They're fighting with their backs the the wall.""I thought maybe you meant you expected a new world war," he lied."That's the least of my worries. When that comes, we've
Vishwas Chavan -
Remember, you are the true guru of yourself. You are therefore always with Guru - your soul. However, at various stages you meet mentors. Mentors are like lighthouse who supports navigation in a journey called life. But, it is the innocence, vision, and purity of yourself (Guru within) determines the degree of success you can achieve.
Nadine Gordimer - The Wit and Wisdom of Nadine Gordimer
I would be guilty only if I were innocent of working to destroy racism in my country.
Fernando Pessoa -
I had the same sensation as when we watch someone sleep. When asleep we all become children again. Perhaps because in the state of slumber we can do no wrong and are unconscious of life, the greatest criminal and most self- absorbed egotist are holy, by a natural magic, as long as they're sleeping. For me there's no discernible difference between killing a child and killing a sleeping man.
Avijeet Das -
To me she looked like a lily, an innocence floating in the pond!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky -
It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader. The sky was so starry, so bright that, looking at it, one could not help asking oneself whether ill-humoured and capricious people could live under such a sky. That is a youthful question too, dear reader, very youthful, but may the Lord put it more frequently into your heart!
John Geddes -
I see you from afar—fragile and shy as a star gleaming through a cloudy rift
Dave Matthes - the Bastard
I've always felt that distant train whistles heard in the dead of night are the universe's way of letting us know the best days are neither ahead nor behind us...they're happening right now, cradled in the palms of our hands. But that doesn't change the fact that the whiskey, weed, and romance eventually runs out and the night will soon turn to day.
Agatha Christie -
[Murder] doesn't concern the victim and the guilty only. It affects the innocent too. You and I are innocent, but the shadow of murder has touched us. We don't know how that shadow is going to affect our lives.