Popular quotes about Innocence! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or the taste of the superhuman, cripple judgment. On the day when crime puts on the apparel of innocence, through a curious reversal peculiar to our age, it is innocence that is called on to justify itself. The purpose of this essay is to accept and study that strange challenge.
Albert CamusNever such innocence, Never before or since, As changed itself to past Without a word--the men Leaving the gardens tidy, The thousands of marriages Lasting a little while longer: Never such innocence again.
Philip LarkinIn former days, everyone found the assumption of innocence so easy; today we find fatally easy the assumption of guilt.
Carolyn HeilbrunMeditation is the art of cleaning your mirror from all the dust that the society, the religion, the educational system has poured on you, to take away everything that has not been born with you, to bring you to your absolute innocence as you were born as a child.
RajneeshWhen you first take someone’s life, two people die. The person you just killed and the human being you used to be. You’re never the same after that—it changes you forever and not in a good way —and no matter how hard you try, you can’t go back to the innocence you had. Ever.
Sherrilyn KenyonThe thing I like most about dogs is their absolute belief in their own innocence, even when they've been caught redhanded. No matter what they've been doing, every bad dog bears the same look when scolded: "What?"
Craig WilsonRegarding local residents attempting to ban sex shops from their neighborhoods: You show me a parent who says he's worried about his child's innocence and I'll show you a homeowner trying to maintain equity.
George CarlinI started writing books for children because I could illustrate them myself and because, in my innocence, I thought they'd be easier.
Mark HaddonThe smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight... [Breadmaking is] one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world's sweetest smells... there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel. that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.
M. F. K. FisherThere are Harvard grads, free thinkers, feminists, abolitionists, well-to-do people who want to go write poetry and live on a farm and cook and laugh and have a good time. As they themselves described it, it was an "inward facing" community. They were focusing on making a better existence for themselves, which I think is also the driving force of 20th century communalism in the US, the thought being that the world is corrupt, and we're going to build this little garden of innocence.
Christine JenningsThe innocence of such children doesn't answer our deepest questions about this vale of tears to which we are condemned, but it helps to dispel them. That is the secret to family life.
Joyce Carol OatesThis isn't about guilt or innocence, he says. The dinosaurs weren't morally good or bad, but they're all dead.
Chuck PalahniukI think a lot of people also have kids to reclaim thу innocence and experience it over again. I think it's about staying curious and not losing the sense of wonder.
Mamie GummerYou get to relive your childhood when you have a baby and you see these toys and these books you read when you were little - the innocence that you are able to maintain because you have to find that again in order to connect with your child keeps you in a special state of mind.
Idina MenzelThe snapshooter’s pictures have an apparent disorder and imperfection, which is exactly their appeal and their style. The picture isn’t straight. It isn’t done well. It isn’t composed. It isn’t thought out. And out of this imbalance, and out of this not knowing, and out of this real innocence toward the medium comes an enormous vitality and expression of life.
Lisette ModelThe practice of Zen mind is beginner's mind. The innocence of the first inquiry—what am I?—is needed throughout Zen practice. The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities. It is the kind of mind which can see things as they are, which step by step and in a flash can realize the original nature of everything.
Shunryu SuzukiO Innocence, with laughing eyes! Thou art a cherub from the skies, A wanderer from heaven.
Harvey RiceYou've had a whole lot of experience, but everything is also radically new at each moment, and you have to bring a kind of childlike second-level innocence to bear upon all situations, if you are going to be of use and you are going to really learn from the situation or the people.
Jean HoustonI haven't lost my innocence particularly. I'm always ready to pretend I haven't. Yeah, it is a shame in a way.
Robert PlantIf we are to reach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children; and if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won't have to struggle; we won't have to pass fruitless idle resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which consciously or unconsciously the whole world is hungering.
Mahatma GandhiIf you go to a master to study and learn the techniques, you diligently follow all the instructions the master puts upon you. But then comes the time for using the rules in your own way and not being bound by them....You can actually forget the rules because they have been assimilated. You are an artist. Your own innocence now is of one who has become an artist, who has been, as it were, transmuted.... You can't have creativity unless you leave behind the bounded, the fixed, all the rules.
Joseph CampbellThe Seasons Difference is a suave and urbane comedy about several immense abstractions - faith, innocence, loneliness, and love.
Orville PrescottIn India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Salman RushdieThe essence of art is to recapturel the fantasy and the imagination of a child again, but without the innocence of a child.
Romare BeardenBesides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is around us, for it is everywhere; and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to gaurd us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognize our innocence, and God waits ony a speration of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward.
Charlotte BronteEverything good is costly, and the development of the personality is one of the most costly of all things. It will cost you your innocence, your illusions, your certainty. (10)
Sheldon B. KoppThe harvest moon has no innocence, like the slim quarter moon of a spring twilight, nor has it the silver penny brilliance of the moon that looks down upon the resorts of summer time. Wise, ripe, and portly, like an old Bacchus, it waxes night after night.
Donald C. PeattieThe deeds of love are less questionable than any action of an individual can be, for, it being founded on the rarest mutual respect, the parties incessantly stimulate each other to a loftier and purer life, and the act in which they are associated must be pure and noble indeed, for innocence and purity can have no equal. In this relation we deal with one whom we respect more religiously even than we respect our better selves, and we shall necessarily conduct as in the presence of God. What presence can be more awful to the lover than the presence of his beloved?
Henry David ThoreauThe culture will not be able to persist in light of the rigid systems of its own innocence.
Michael Eric DysonI bought my first camera to photograph my brother's children. I learned a lot from that experience. The value of innocence and of not being focused on yourself, and I have to say that these things have remained with me to this day. I can immediately feel when someone is putting on a camera face.
Peter LindberghMeditation makes you innocent, it makes you childlike. In that state, miracles are possible. That state is pure magic. A great transformation happens - in innocence you transcend the mind, and to transcend the mind is to become the Awakened One, the Enlightened One.
RajneeshNo one is safe from slander. The best way is to pay no attention to it, but live in innocence and let the world talk.
MoliereThe beloved's innocence brutalizes the lover. As the singing of a mad person behind you on the train enrages you, its beautiful animal-like teeth shining amid black planes of paint. As Helen enrages history. Senza uscita.
Anne CarsonInnocence is indeed a glorious thing; but, unfortunately, it does not keep very well and is easily led astray.
Immanuel KantThe writer cannot abandon himself simply to inspiration, and feign innocence vis a vis language, because language is never innocent.
Juan GoytisoloAs children's inquiries are not to be slighted, so also great care is to be taken, that they never receive deceitful and illuding answers. They easily perceive when they are slighted or deceived, and quickly learn the trick of neglect, dissimulation, and falsehood, which they observe others to make use of. We are not to intrench upon truth in any conversation, but least of all with children; since, if we play false with them, we not only deceive their expectation, and hinder their knowledge, but corrupt their innocence, and teach them the worst of vices.
John LockeThere was a serenity about him always that had the look of innocence, when, technically, the word was no longer applicable.
Virginia Woolf