Quotes About Innocence

I feel almost as if I had been born in a vacuum of innocence, and then had to come to terms with the fact that actually, I was born into the middle of history - the rather grimy normality of the 70s, which did, indeed, retain some traces of human innocence, but were also girded about by the demons of experience.

Unlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence. The mounting of this illusion defines the purpose and accounts for the immense wealth of American sports. It is the ceremony of innocence that the fans pay to see - not the game or the match or the bout, but the ritual portrayal of a world in which time stops and all hope remains plausible, in which everybody present can recover the blameless expectations of a child, where the forces of light always triumph over the powers of darkness.

I know you have the capability to understand right from wrong because you hate people who harm children. Well, why not despise people who harm animals? It's hypocritical! Why protect one and violate the other when neither one wants or deserves the abuse? They just wish it would end. Stop praising the innocence in children then ignoring or making fun of the innocence in animals.

I don't think that on a daily basis, people need to be so concerned with others think. When someone comes forward and is an individual, such as a Lady Gaga or a Katy Perry, people respond to them because there is that sense of innocence. It's obviously dress up and theatre. I never lost that I think part of that is growing up gay and part is growing up overweight. You never lose that, and I never want to lose touch with that whimsy, that sense of innocence. I also love the reaction it elicits in people. I like that it makes other people happy.

This is a generation weaned on Watergate, and there is no presumption of innocence and no presumption of good intentions. Instead, there is a presumption that, without relentless scrutiny, the government will misbehave.

Innocence of heart and violence of feeling are necessary in any kind of superior achievement: The arts cannot exist without them.

The first of all virtues is innocence; the next is modesty. If we banish modesty out of the world, she carries away with her half the virtue that is in it.

Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.

I started writing books for children because I could illustrate them myself and because, in my innocence, I thought they'd be easier.

A man is not to aim at innocence, any more than he is to aim at hair, but he is to keep it.

More than fantasy or even science fiction, Ray Bradbury wrote horror, and like so many great horror writers he was himself utterly without fear, of anything. He wasn't afraid of looking uncool - he wasn't scared to openly love innocence, or to be optimistic, or to write sentimentally when he felt that way.

Most really good fiction is compelled into being. It comes from a kind of uncalculated innocence. You need not have your ending in mind before you commence. Indeed, you need not be certain of exactly what's going to transpire on page 2. If you know the whole story in advance, your novel is probably dead before you begin it. Give it some room to breathe, to change direction, to surprise you. Writing a novel is not so much a project as a journey, a voyage, an adventure.

The way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God leads on, not back, not back to the wolf or to the child, but ever further into sin, ever deeper into human life.

I wanted to be born at the farthest limit of the world. I'll explore it, I said to myself, biting big chunks from it. And when I want, I'll go straight to the core. This is the way of the world I thought in my innocence, round and around the layers of peel until the taste becomes certain.

Those who judge children in their innocence, prove themselves the lesser of character and the greater of ignorance.

Irony is the attendant of hope and the fuel of hope is innocence.

I was first sexually exploited when I was seven, by a distant cousin at a family wedding. Even after that I was routinely molested by older cousins and their friends. See, my innocence was taken away and I became mature at one bloody incident. I believe I never had a childhood. I grew up as an elderly person. And that's what my femininity brought upon me. Of course, in a patriarchal society, hijras' bodies are thought of as toys.

Knowledge is a burden if it robs you of innocence. Knowledge is a burden if it is not integrated into life. Knowledge is a burden if it doesn't bring joy. Knowledge is a burden if it gives you an idea that you are wise. Knowledge is a burden if it doesn't set you free. Knowledge is a burden if it makes you feel you are special.

The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever.

It is a low thing to always want to be understood. Let my innocence take care of itself.

The religious school she went to, growing up, Ms. Wright said how all the girls had to wear a scarf tied to cover their ears at all times. Based on the biblical idea that the Virgin Mary became pregnant when the Holy Spirit whispered in her ear. The idea that ears were vaginas. That, hearing just one wrong idea, you lost your innocence. One detail too many and you’d be ruined. Overdosed on information.

How beautiful is sorrow when it is dressed by virgin innocence! it makes felicity in others seem deformed.

There is something splendid about innocence; but what is bad about it, in turn, is that it cannot protect itself very well and is easily seduced.

To 'justify' means nothing else than to acquit of guilt him (her) who was accused as if his own innocence were confirmed.

Conscience, that boon companion who sets a man free under the strong breastplate of innocence, that bids him on and fear not.

Most men die many times in their lives. The man we become invariably slaughters the child we once were. His knowledge of the world murders the babe's innocence. from Time Untime by Sherrilyn Kenyon

No matter what mistakes we might have made yesterday, today is the day we can retrieve our innocence.

Innocence has nothing to dread.

No man can tell but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents make a man's heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges; their childishness, their stammering, their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society.

There was a serenity about him always that had the look of innocence, when, technically, the word was no longer applicable.

...I had to point at Hanna. But the finger I pointed at her turned back to me. I had loved her. I tried to tell myself that I had known nothing of what she had done when I chose her. I tried to talk myself into the state of innocence in which children love their parents. But love of our parents is the only love for which we are not responsible. ...And perhaps we are responsible even for the love we feel for our parents.

They come to us, these restless dead, Shrouds woven from the words of men, With trumpets sounding overhead (The walls of hope have grown so thin And all our vaunted innocence Has withered in this endless frost) That promise little recompense For all we risk, for all we've lost.

Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartednes s that requires the true courage -- however often we are hurt as a result of it.

The presumption of innocence only means you don't go right to jail.

The purpose of writing is both to keep up with life and to run ahead of it. I am little comfort to myself, although I am the only comfort I have, excepting perhaps streets, clouds, the sun, the faces and voices of kids and the aged, and similar accidents of beauty, innocence, truth and loneliness.

To write books is to have a certain relation with original sin. For what is a book if not a loss of innocence, an act of aggression, a repetition of our Fall?

Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.

Lend sat up,craning his neck to see down my shirt,which I hurriedly pushed back into place. Last time I checked, you couldn't see souls.He shrugged,an exaggerated look of innocence on his face. Still,it wouldn't hurt for me to try,would it?You have got to be the most sefless boyfriend alive.Like I said,anything worthwhile is worth making sacrifices for.Speaking of which,weren't you going to give me a tongue demonstration?

According to how gifted we are, we are all given a large or small key to this treasury of wonders. I have been blessed with a small key to the world of the young. It's a place where good and evil are clearly stamped. It's a place where the better part of human nature triumphs over tragedies, and where innocence rides high. It is a great pleasure to write there, because the young have what the rest of us only envy, and that is a belief in goodness and perpetual hope.

All hatred driven hence, The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is self-delighting, Self-appeasing, self-affrighting, And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will

When I was a kid growing up in New York, I was pretty unaware of racism. I think when we're young - before we lose our innocence - we're sort of unaware of the more flawed qualities of each other.

Not in innocence, and not in Asia, was mankind born. The home of our fathers was that African highland reaching north from the Cape to the Lakes of the Nile. Here we came about-slowly, ever so slowly-on a sky-swept savannah glowing with menace.

When I put the camera back to my eye, I noticed a particular guardsman pointing at me. I said, "I'll get a picture of this," and his rifle went off. And almost simultaneously, as his rifle went off, a halo of dust came off a sculpture next to me, and the bullet lodged in a tree. I dropped my camera in the realization that it was live ammunition. I don't know what gave me the combination of innocence and stupidity... but I never took cover.

It had never occurred to Giles that there was something perfectly sensible about wanting to hold onto innocence. He had always gone in for the idea that since we only pass this way once, experience counts for everything.

... Janis Joplin has one of the most distinguished female voices of the decade. It is a voice that has been aged in Southern Comfort and cured with Kahlua and milk. It is a voice that cuts you like a razor, but you can still hear the innocence in it, a claim to purity that soars out of the garbage of her throat, carrying evil harmonies.

Evidence of innocence is irrelevant!

All animals are born with innocence, curiosity and love.

Do you know anything that in all its innocence is more humiliating than the funny pages of a Sunday newspaper in America?