Quotes About Innocence

The man who has not loved before he was fourteen has missed a foretaste of Elysium.

Publishers, readers, booksellers, even critics, acclaim the novel that one can deliciously sink into, forget oneself in, the novel that returns us to the innocence of childhood or the dream of the cartoon, the novel of a thousand confections and no unwanted significance. What becomes harder to find, and lonelier to defend, is the idea of the novel as—in Ford Madox Ford's words—a "medium of profoundly serious investigation into the human case.

My kittens look at me like little angels, and always after doing something especially devilish.

The quickness with which all positive emotions such as love and trust can be expunged from the heart of a child is astounding. p 131

Children are paparazzi. They take your picture when you don't want them to.

White is The color for innocence, but iT can Be So Dangerous.

Young children see the innocence of life, while some adults live in innocence.

I have never seen so many ugly dresses. I cannot find this dress, which was woven out of daydreams and naiveté.

All people are children when they sleep. There's no war in them then . . . They . . . open their hands halfway, soldiers and statesmen, servants and masters. . . . If only we could speak to one another then when our hearts are half-open flowers Words like golden bees would drift in.

It makes everything innocent again," she said. "A winter Eden.

The gardenia is an enigma, its petals dusted with the creamy white purity of innocence, but its aroma is wildly seductive. How appropriate; for in the language of flowers, the gift of gardenias conveys the message of secret love. —DB

You were a child, you didn't mean to hurt my feelings. Children are ignorant. It takes an adult to choose to be cruel.

Hansi, after a day or two's distant politeness, had taken her by the hand and led her to a row of curiously-shaped pebbles in a secret hiding-place between the wood-stacks. "Meine Sammlung," he said briefly. "My election," echoed Toby's voice in her memory. Her heart turned over: how could there be this ridiculous talk of war, when little boys in all countries collected stones, dodged cleaning their teeth, and hated cauliflower?

Laywers, I suppose, were children once.

beautiful. Untarnished by the touches of other men, unencumbered with pride and vanity

I whisper, losing myself in my native language as I sing her praises. Her beauty and innocence slay me, and my voice is hoarse with the effort of holding back. "Ty takaya krasivaya. Takoy nevinnyy," I murmur. You're so beautiful. So innocent

When Mantle faced the cameras for the last time a month before his death, he was a husk of a man, shrunken by cancer. The stiff brim of his 1995 All-Star Game cap dwarfed his brow. There was no Mantle Roll. He looked straight into the cameras and told us all, 'Don't be like me.' The transformation of The Mick parallels the transformation of American culture from willful innocence to knowing cynicism. To tell his story is to tell ours.

The fundamental condition of childhood is powerlessness.

And for adults, the world of fantasy books returns to us the great words of power which, in order to be tamed, we have excised from our adult vocabularies. These words are the pornography of innocence, words which adults no longer use with other adults, and so we laugh at them and consign them to the nursery, fear masking as cynicism. These are the words that were forged in the earth, air, fire, and water of human existence, and the words are: Love. Hate. Good. Evil. Courage. Honor. Truth.

I've never met a woman so beautiful and innocent, yet so skillful she steals your mind. I'm afraid you're going to be unforgettable." -Lynx

I had a pretty sexual imagination for a kid.

Yesterday you asked me what the purpose of life is. I've thought about that ever since. I think it's to do good no matter what life throws at you, to not let the pain turn you bitter. It's something we have to learn, something we have to make ourselves become...Little kids don't have to learn it. They already know.

An infant's smile was the greatest promise that the world would go on, no matter how much the grown-ups mucked around with it.

The soul of a child is as complicated and full of contradictions as our soul is.