Quotes About Innocence

I got a glimpse of something young, dark and happy and not yet spoiled: an animal that didn't yet recognize her captivity.

Tacitamente, l'innocenza chiede sempre protezione, quando invece sarebbe molto più saggio se fossimo noi a proteggerci da essa. L'innocenza è come un lebbroso istupidito che ha perso il suo campanello, e che vaga per il mondo senza l'intenzione di far del male a nessuno.

myself. Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

You can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless.

Find me an uncomplicated child, Pyle. When we are young we are a jungle of complications. We simplify as we get older.

Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world meaning no harm

What an unbearable creature he must have been in those days—and yet in those days he had been comparatively innocent. That was another mystery: it sometimes seemed to him that venial sins—impatience, an unimportant lie, pride, a neglected opportunity—cut you off from grace more completely than the worst sins of all. Then, in his innocence, he had felt no love for anyone; now in his corruption he had learnt...

Graham Greene

His father had been slightly ahead, carrying sister Zoe. There were creatures looking at him from behind the blue slate rocks; they pointed their fingers and smiled cruel smiles. He felt safe in his mother's papoose (facing backwords) but was still afraid of the creatures. He was only just old enough to talk. He'd tried to make a sound but he was almost mesmerized by the creatures stirring in the wake of the family's passage.

You never know what it is like to be a child, even as a child. You have to have one of your own, and then it comes to you. You understand for the first time.

They start again as children—all together. It is what the Composer was designed to prevent.

All dreams are young, my host, my friend. All dreams belong to youth, whether they be nightmares or idylls.

How nice it would be to know nothing about all the inner workings. Animal innocence; the unexamined life is the sweetest. But things go wrong and prompt introspection and examination. The root of all awareness.

The faith of children is an awesome thing to behold. If only we could all be worthy of it.

The naïveté of human beings is truly breathtaking

An Alford plea can be rather perplexing; it's a plea that allows the defendant to plead guilty yet assert innocence at the same time. It's also a plea that allows the defense and the prosecution to save face—and money—by avoiding going to a trial that would almost surely result in a conviction.

Orphaned daughters of a well-to-do English officer in the Imperial Army Medical Service, Dorothea was born in Trichinopoli, India, Claire in London. And though schooled in Switzerland, England, and France and well traveled, the sisters, especially Claire, exhibited a childlike naïveté and innocence that sometimes left them a target of manipulation by those with dubious intentions.

Nothing ever fits the palm so perfectly, or feels so right, or inspires so much protective instinct as the hand of a child

I understood their hopeful, innocent excitement, and in a small and distant way I even shared it.

We only have babies when we're young enough not to know how grim life turns out.

Are you the dart? he said. Are you the knife? The fuse? She said (though he wasn't convinced): My deane, my poppet, I am too green to walk into a public place and do something bad...

Staring at a world too horrible to comprehend, believing -- by dint of ignorance and innocence -- that beneath this unbearable contract of guilt and blame there is always an older contract that may bind and release in a more salutary way.

At the age of nine, I could cross the length of Glasgow on a succession of buses, wearing regulation garter-topped stockings and compulsory cap and - if I'd done well enough to earn the honour in last week's test - with a First World War medal on a striped ribbon pinned to my brown blazer. I must have looked like a chocolate soldier.

I am not saying that Hitler was a choir boy. But I am saying, let him who was innocent in the Second World War cast the first stone.