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 ChabonI can sing very comfortably from my vantage point because a lot of the music was about a loss of innocence, there's innocence contained in you but there's also innocence in the process of being lost.
Bruce SpringsteenIf 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 forget nothing and then, one day, there will be revenge. Innocence isn't exactly everywhere. But I will say innocence also takes you far in photography.
Karl LagerfeldMere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
William Butler YeatsThe 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 WilsonThree or four threads may be agitated, like telegraph wires, at the same time, and if I were to tap them all I would reveal such a mixture of innocence and duplicity, generosity and calculation, fear and courage, I cannot tell the whole truth simply because I would have to write four journals at once.
Anais NinA girl is Innocence playing in the mud, Beauty standing on its head, and Motherhood dragging a doll by the foot.
Alan BeckFocus on guilt will always breed fear, and focus on innocence will always breed love. Any time we project guilt onto someone else, we are fortifying the experience of guilt within ourselves. Like blood on Lady MacBeth's hands, we cannot remove our own guilty feelings as long as we are judging others.
Marianne WilliamsonMost 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.
Tom RobbinsChoices, more choices than we like afterward to believe, are made far backward in the innocence of childhood.
Loren EiseleyIt is, I suppose, the common grief of children at having to protect their parents from reality. It is bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults grow into, that terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mire of childhood.
Katherine DunnInnocence is drowned in anarchy. The best lack conviction given time to think, and the worst are full of passion without mercy.
Joni MitchellInnocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.
Graham GreeneThe snapshooterโs pictures have an apparent disorder and imperfection, which is exactly their appeal and their style. The picture isnโt straight. It isnโt done well. It isnโt composed. It isnโt 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 ModelI don't think the law exists to arrive at the truth. If it did, we wouldn't have exclusionary rules, we wouldn't have presumptions of innocence, we wouldn't have proof beyond reasonable doubt. There's an enormous difference between the role of truth in law and the role of truth in science. In law, truth is one among many goals.
Alan DershowitzUnlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence.
Lewis H. LaphamA cheerful temper, joined with innocence will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good-natured.
Joseph AddisonHe is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.
Henry MillerMind is repetitive, mind always moves in circles. Mind is a mechanism: you feed it with knowledge, it repeats the same knowledge, it goes on chewing the same knowledge again and again. No-mind is clarity, purity, innocence. No-mind is the real way to live, the real way to know, the real way to be.
RajneeshIt wasn't the intention to do something important, or to even relate about social issues. The ground is so fertile in the justice world, dealing with the death penalty and the Innocence Project, for characters that have a moral ambiguity, which we were both attracted to. It's the idea that everybody has their reasons. Whatever their actions are, whether you agree with them or not, you can understand why they're feeling that way, in terms of racism or even the death penalty.
Richard LaGraveneseThe practice of Zen mind is beginner's mind. The innocence of the first inquiryโwhat am I?โis 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 SuzukiWhether 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 TaftInnocence is impossible when people have never had the choice of becoming corrupt by dominating others.
Sheila RowbothamNo matter how close we are to another person, few human relationships are as free from strife, disagreement, and frustration as is the relationship you have with a good dog. Few human beings give of themselves to another as a dog gives of itself. I also suspect that we cherish dogs because their unblemished souls make us wish - consciously or unconsciously - that we were as innocent as they are, and make us yearn for a place where innocence is universal and where the meanness, the betrayals, and the cruelties of this world are unknown.
Dean KoontzThere's no limit to what you can dream. You expect the unexpected, you believe in magic, in fairy tales, and in possibilities. Then you grow older and that innocence is shattered and somewhere along the way the reality of life gets in the way and you're hit by the realization that you can't be all you wanted to be, you just might have to settle for a little bit less.
Cecelia AhernYour Christians, whom one persecutes in vain, have something in them that surpasses the human. They lead a life of such innocence,that the heavens owe them some recognition: that they arise the stronger the more they are beaten down is hardly the result of common virtues.
Pierre CorneilleI'm not sure if there is a cultural loss of innocence specifically associated with the seventies. The oil crisis? The Watergate scandal? I really don't know. There's nothing there on the scale of Hiroshima.
Quentin S. CrispWhen 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.
Patrick RothfussFor me, a lot of the humor comes not from innocence but from characters trying to figure out how to get what they need. I don't try to be funny, but am relieved when an opportunity comes up for humor.
Akhil SharmaThe 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 ThoreauComing to the master is coming in search of your innocence, in search of your lost childhood, in search of your originality... in search of your individuality, in search of freedom.
RajneeshThe culture will not be able to persist in light of the rigid systems of its own innocence.
Michael Eric DysonEarly in life she had discovered the important truth that nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion; and by a series of reckless escapades, half of them quite harmless, she had acquired all the privileges of a personality.
Oscar WildeHow often, being moved under a false cause, if the person offending makes a good defense and presents us with a just excuse, are we angry against truth and innocence itself?
Michel de MontaigneA cold and searching wind drives away all contagion, and nothing can withstand it but what has a virtue in it, and accordingly, whatever we meet with in cold and bleak places, as the tops of mountains, we respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a Puritan toughness. All things beside seem to be called in for shelter, and what stays out must be part of the original frame of the universe, and of such valor as God himself.
Henry David ThoreauOur civilization has decided that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.
Gilbert K. ChestertonInnocence is indeed a glorious thing; but, unfortunately, it does not keep very well and is easily led astray.
Immanuel KantThose who have lost an infant are never, as it were, without an infant child. Their other children grow up to manhood and womanhood, and suffer all the changes of mortality; but this one alone is rendered an immortal child; for death has arrested it with his kindly harshness, and blessed it into an eternal image of youth and innocence.
Leigh Hunt