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Quotes About Innocence

Not having yet passed through those bitter experiences which enforce upon older years circumspection and coldness, I deprived myself of the pure delight of a fresh, childish instinct for the absurd purpose of trying to resemble grown-up people.
~ Leo Tolstoy
A feeling such as she had known when about to take the first plunge in bathing came upon her, and she crossed herself. That familiar gesture brought back into her soul a whole series of girlish and childish memories, and suddenly the darkness that had covered everything for her was torn apart, and life rose up before her for an instant with all its bright past joys.
~ Leo Tolstoy
When the candle was taken away, Seryozha heard and felt his mother. She stood over him, and with loving eyes caressed him. But then came windmills, a knife, everything began to be mixed up, and he fell asleep.
~ Leo Tolstoy
Will the freshness, unconcern, need for love and strength of faith you posses as a child ever return? What time could have been better than when the two finest virtues - innocent gaiety and a limitless need for love - were life's only impulses? Where are those ardent prayers? Where is the best gift - those pure tears of tenderness? A comforting angel would fly down to dry those tears with a smile and waft sweet reveries into the uncorrupted imagination of childhood.
~ Leo Tolstoy
He was only nine years old, he was a child; but he knew his own soul, it was dear to him, he protected it as the eyelid protects the eye, and did not let anyone into his soul without the key of love.
~ Leo Tolstoy
Innocence is no excuse in the eyes of the Law.
~ Leon Garfield
Intercourse was now forbidden to everyone but married people; bundling disappeared. In its place young courting couples engaged in "petting"--which, interpreted broadly, meant that they were could do anything sexual short of intercourse. Women were now held responsible for controlling men's beastly sexuality--halting them from simply plunging ahead--at the same time that they were expected to be sexually innocent: an impossible position.
~ Leora Tanenbaum
The existence of overt homosexuality threatens to compromise an essential aspect of American sentimental life: the camaraderie of the locker room and ball park, the good fellowship of the poker game and fishing trip, a kind of passionless passion, at once gross and delicate, homoerotic in the boy's sense, possessing an innocence above suspicion.
~ Leslie Fiedler
Every child has the capacity to be everything.
~ lessing doris v
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.
~ Lev Grossman
This is a feeling that you had, Quentin, she said. Once, a very long time ago. A rare one. This is how you felt when you were eight years old, and you opened one of the Fillory books for the first time, and you felt awe and joy and hope and longing all at once. You felt them very strongly, Quentin. You dreamed of Fillory then, with a power and an innocence that not many people ever experience. That's where all this began for you. You wanted the world to be better than it was.
~ Lev Grossman
This was a double game: he was trying to save his childhood, to preserve it and trap it in amber, but to do that he was calling on things that partook of the world beyond childhood, whose touch would leave him even less innocent than he already was. What would that make him? Neither a child nor an adult, neither innocent nor wise. Perhaps that is what a monster is.
~ Lev Grossman
This is a feeling that you had, Quentin,' she said. 'Once, a very long time ago. A rare one. This is how you felt when you were eight years old, and you opened one of the Fillory books for the first time, and you felt awe and joy and hope and longing all at once. You felt them very strongly, Quentin. You dreamed of Fillory then, with a power and an innocence that not many ever experience. That's where all this began for you. You wanted the world to be better than it was.
~ Lev Grossman
My mom had gotten a Super 8 camera to make home movies with, and my brother and me got our hands on it and ran with it.
~ Lev Yilmaz
Child of the pure, unclouded browAnd dreaming eyes of wonder!Though time be fleet and I and thouAre half a life asunder,Thy loving smile will surely hailThe love-gift of a fairy tale.
~ Lewis Carroll
I'd give all wealth that years have piled, The slow result of Life's decay, To be once more a little child For one bright summer day.
~ Lewis Carroll
When I was nine, my life was devoted to seeing a tit. I was Captain Ahab, and it was my big white whale. I'd go down to Sears on a Sunday in hopes they'd remove a clothing from a mannequin. Sad but true, sad but fuckin' true.
~ Lewis Niles Black
Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
~ Jonathan Swift
I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing.
~ Johnny Carson
When I was a kid, I used to think pork chops and karate chops were the same thing.
~ Shane Koyczan
Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that's so deep in history that there's no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.
~ Noam Chomsky
The great thing about candy is that it can't be spoiled by the adult world. Candy is innocent. And all Halloween candy pales next to candy corn, if only because candy corn used to appear, like the Great Pumpkin, solely on Halloween.
~ Rosecrans Baldwin
As a little girl living in the English countryside, I used to go running around in the forests, creating my own fairy tale.
~ Lily Collins
I was deeply in love with David Soul from 'Starsky & Hutch' when I was 11 or 12. I used to borrow my mum's peach nighty and put some lipstick on and say I was going on a date with him. I made this little purse and would carry a picture of him in it and say he was my boyfriend.
~ Kate Garraway