Popular quotes about Innocence! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
There are no moments more painful for a parent than those in which you contemplate your child's perfect innocence of some imminent pain, misfortune, or sorrow. That innocence (like every kind of innocence children have) is rooted in their trust of you, one that you will shortly be obliged to betray; whether it is fair or not, whether you can help it or not, you are always the ultimate guarantor or destroyer of that innocence.
Michael ChabonIf I could, Sister James, I would certainly choose to live in innocence. But innocence can only be wisdom in a world without evil. Situations arise and we are confronted with wrongdoing and the need to act.
John Patrick ShanleyI prefer to have all of this apparatus - historical, literary, critical - and then, beyond initial innocence and naivetรฉ, to try to achieve a new innocence, a new naivetรฉ.
Frank Moore CrossThe fun is created only through innocence and innocence is the only way you can really emit also the fun. Imagine this world without any fun, what would happen?
Nirmala SrivastavaI think that for those of us who come from oppressed backgrounds and who do our work in marginalized communities, recovering our innocence is one of the most important acts of self-liberation and de-colonization. Not letting the requirement that we adapt to impossible circumstances and unconscionable crimes leave us shackled to the kind of cynicism and armor such that we can't breathe and laugh and magnetize to ourselves all the genius and love and support that we need to transform the situation. That's probably the biggest challenge, is to recover our innocence.
Van JonesUnlike 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.
Lewis H. LaphamThe talk of pale, burning-eyed students, anarchists and utopians all, over tea and cigarettes in a locked room long past midnight, is next morning translated, with the literalness of utter innocence, into the throwing of the bomb, the shouting of the proud slogan, the dragging away of the young dreamer-doer, still smiling, to the dungeon and the firing squad.
Christopher IsherwoodWriting novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.
Anita BrooknerIn former days, everyone found the assumption of innocence so easy; today we find fatally easy the assumption of guilt.
Carolyn HeilbrunShe felt him tremble with the force of his need. He spoke just beneath her ear, his voice thick with tormented pleasure. "You have to leave, Sara ... because I want to hold you like this until your skin melts into mine. I want you in my bed, the smell of you on my sheets, your hair spread across my pillow. I want to take your innocence. God! I want to ruin you for anyone else.
Lisa KleypasMeditation 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.
RajneeshYou do not have to incriminate yourself. But once you assert your innocence, and once you say you didn't do anything wrong, you can't then use the Fifth Amendment to say, 'I'm not answering questions.'
Rush LimbaughIf the first casualty of war is innocence, then perhaps with each bullet fired, bomb detonated, leader overthrown, wall built, economy destroyed and family member killed, we are not creating goodwill and harmony, but rather another child who believes violence is the only means to bring about change in the world.
Michael FrantiThe 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 WilsonChildren, Never look Back!" and this meant that we must never allow the future to be weighed down by memory . for children have no past, and that is the whole secret of the magical innocence of their smiles.
Milan KunderaThere is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.
Flannery O'ConnorIt's still possible to savor the remarkable foods that millennia of human ingenuity have teased from milk. A sip of milk itself or a scoop of ice cream can be a Proustian draft of youth's innocence and energy and possibility, while a morsel of fine cheese is a rich meditation on maturity, the fulfillment of possibility, the way of all flesh.
Harold McGeeA man is not to aim at innocence, any more than he is to aim at hair, but he is to keep it.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe only thing I was trying to portray was serenity. Also, innocence, vulnerability and elegance.
Sylvia KristelAwakening is waking up from the daytime dream and realizing that who you thought you were is not limited to thought, emotion or form. Beyond the imaginary seeker, beyond concepts and beliefs, there is a field of innocence and purity. We are this deep peace and sacredness, which is absolute and beyond all intellectual understanding. I invite you to recognize this Essence of Being and to directly realize the illusion of all psychological suffering due to misidentification, misperception of separation and attachment to conditioned thought.
Katie DavisDunbar-Ortiz strips us of our forged innocence, shocks us into new awareness, and draws a straight line from the sins of our fathers-settler-colonialism, the doctrine of discovery, the myth of manifest destiny, white supremacy, theft and systematic killing-to the contemporary condition of permanent war, invasion and occupation, mass incarceration, and the constant use and threat of state violence.
Bill AyersEvery trait of beauty may be traced to some virtue, as to innocence, candor, generosity, modesty, and heroism.
Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-PierreEnjoyment and innocence are the most bashful things: both do not want to be sought.
Friedrich NietzscheA feeling heart is a blessing that no one, who has it, would be without; and it is a moral security of innocence; since the heart that is able to partake of the distress of another, cannot wilfully give it.
Samuel RichardsonAnimals have this way of constantly confronting us with ultimate questions - about truth and falsehood, guilt and innocence, God and sanctity and the soul - forcing us to define ourselves and our relationship to the world.
Matthew ScullyThe innocence of virgins is like milk which turns when exposed to a clap of thunder, to a tart smell, to a hot day, to the merest nothing.
Honore de BalzacI did gardening and cooking and drawing and reading to try take the pressure off the music - just being eclectic and putting the fun back in and bringing more innocence in again is really important.
Bat for LashesThere have been many beautiful women since Marilyn Monroe. But who is there that has her total magic? Nobody has that vulnerability any more. We turn to child models in an instinctive search for that innocence and freshness, but they donโt have the deep feminine sexuality that came from Marilyn like light.
Bert SternIt's of more importance to community that innocence should be protected than it is that guilt should be punished
John AdamsO Innocence, with laughing eyes! Thou art a cherub from the skies, A wanderer from heaven.
Harvey RiceWhether we knew many who died on September 11 or personally knew none, we all lost something on that day. Innocence. Security. A trust that our homeland would always be safe.
Bob TaftThere 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.
Immanuel KantPeople talk vaguely about the innocence of a little child, but they take mighty good care not to let it out of their sight for twenty minutes.
Hector Hugh MunroWhere were you born?" "On a battlefield," [Yossarian] answered. "No, no. In what state were you born?" "In a state of innocence.
Joseph HellerIt is the custom to sneer at the modern apartment-house, television, big-city Christmas, with its commercial taint . . . office parties, artificial . . . Christmas trees . . . but future generations in search of their lost Christmases may well remember its innocence; yes, and its beauty, too.
Paul GallicoAs one sees a river pass into the ocean, lose itself in it, its water for a time distinguished from that of the sea, till it gradually becomes transformed into the same sea, and possesses all its qualities; so was my soul lost in God, who communicated to it His qualities, having drawn it out of all that it had of its own. Its life is an inconceivable innocence, not known or comprehended of those who are still shut up in themselves or only live for themselves.
Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte GuyonI think the heartbreak of September 11 - America's grief not only over the loss of life but also the loss of our own innocence -has expanded us as people because it has tenderized our hearts. On a psychological level, the American people have matured as a result of that awful day.
Marianne Williamson...and we have so far improved upon the custom of Adam and Eve, that we generally furnish forth our feasts with a portion of some delicate calf or lamb, whose unspotted innocence entitles them to the happiness of becoming our sustenance.
Nathaniel HawthorneBut say, my brothers, what can the child do that even the lion could not do? Why must the preying lion still become a child? The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a sacred 'Yes.' For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred 'Yes' is needed: the spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers his own world.
Friedrich NietzscheMadonna 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.
Sue Monk Kidd