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Link Quote Stars Tags Author
e23a7d0 Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands. right-of-passage self-determination inspirational self-responsibility personal-responsibility growing-up innocence parenting Anne Frank
76d1b6e If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends. innocence Charlotte Brontë
bea3405 "A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs. Dursley's scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley...He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: "To Harry Potter - the boy who lived!" fate harry-potter fame innocence J.K. Rowling
8b3f8cc It's never too late to have a happy childhood. youth innocence children Tom Robbins
7281db1 Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being. rebellion revolt innocence nostalgia Albert Camus
60de911 It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one. verdict reasonable-doubt mercy judgment innocence justice guilt Voltaire
881d589 He moved like a dancer, which is not surprising; a horse is a beautiful animal, but it is perhaps most remarkable because it moves as if it always hears music. truth innocence horse Mark Helprin
d797f3c He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activites in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all. youth life loss-of-innocence truths growing-up innocence Cormac McCarthy
47e3378 Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. self-acceptance innocence Joan Didion
7c5ff31 " " J. Michael Haller, Criminal Defense Attorney, Los Angeles, 1962." responsibility risk fear clients criminal-law justice-system innocence justice guilt Michael Connelly
16ad8df But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody'd written 'fuck you' on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them-- all cockeyed naturally-- what it meant, and how they'd all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever'd written it. innocence J.D. Salinger
1e3b69d My world was the size of a crayon box, and it took every colour to draw her poetry innocence Sarah Kay
c09a0ab "I don't know," Mark said, looking down at his own long pale fingers tangled in the little boy's brown curls. "He just - Julian left, and Tavvy fell asleep on my lap." He sounded amazed, wondering. "Of course he did," Cristina said. "He's your brother. He trusts you." "Nobody trusts a Hunter," Mark said." trust family octavian-blackthorn mark-blackthorn innocence Cassandra Clare
9d50c93 "We Lannisters do have a certain pride," said Tyrion Lannister. "Pride?" Catelyn snapped. His mocking tone and easy manner made her angry. "Arrogance, some might call it. Arrogance and avarice and lust for power." "My brother is undoubtedly arrogant," Tyrion Lannister replied. "My father is the soul of avarice, and my sweet sister Cersei lusts for power with every waking breath. I, however, am innocent as a little lamb. Shall I bleat for you?" He grinned." avarice innocence power George R.R. Martin
250bac2 I remembered my little brother, Allyn, had appeared so innocent and angelic when he slept--similar to Kerrick. It must be a survival tactic. If Allyn hadn't looked so sweet, we would have killed him while he slept. He had been pure evil when he was awake--similar to Kerrick. sleep humor appearances brothers innocence survival Maria V. Snyder
a747e31 Who else but me is ever going to read these letters? irony innocence Anne Frank
98119c2 "This is a bad story." "Sorry. I'm really sorry. I shouldn't have told you." "No, you should," I say. "But--" "I don't want there to be bad stories and me not know them." innocence stories Emma Donoghue
50dc823 For children, childhood is timeless. It is always the present. Everything is in the present tense. Of course, they have memories. Of course, time shifts a little for them and Christmas comes round in the end. But they don't feel it. Today is what they feel, and when they say 'When I grow up,' there is always an edge of disbelief--how could they ever be other than what they are? time time-passing innocence childhood nostalgia Ian McEwan
a3b2f25 O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm. That flies in the night In the howling storm: Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy; And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. - virtue innocence-lost innocence seduction William Blake
ffada56 Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door. william-blake innocence pity William Blake
306bc31 "Westcliff thinks that St. Vincent is in love with you." Evie choked a little and didn't dare look up from her tea. "Wh-why does he think that?" "He's known St. Vincent from childhood, and can read him fairly well. And Westcliff sees an odd sort of logic in why you would finally be the one to win St. Vincent's heart. He says a girl like you would appeal to...hmm, how did he put it?...I can't remember the exact words, but it was something like... you would appeal to St. Vincent's deepest, most secret fantasy." Evie felt her cheeks flushing while a skirmish of pain and hope took place in the tired confines of her chest. She tried to respond sardonically. "I should think his fantasy is to consort with as many women as possible." A grin crossed Lillian's lips. "Dear, that is not St. Vincent's fantasy, it's his reality. And you're probably the first sweet, decent girl he's ever had anything to do with." fantasy friendship love lillian-bowman secret-desire sebastian-st-vincent innocence Lisa Kleypas
882279e Adults had the notion that juveniles needed to suffer. Only when they had suffered enough to wipe out most of their naturally joyous spirits and innocence were they staid enough to be considered mature. An adult was essentially a broken-down child. suffering innocence Piers Anthony
b72b33c "For Mercy has a human heart; Pity, a human face; And Love, the human form divine: And Peace the human dress. Songs of Innocence Cruelty has a human heart And jealousy a human face, Terror the human form divine, And secrecy the human dress. The human dress is forged iron, The human form a fiery forge, The human face a furnace seal'd, innocence human-nature William Blake
5966264 My hands are of your colour; but I shame To wear a heart so white. murder lady-macbeth innocence shame macbeth William Shakespeare
bfee7bd "But I rather thought--I mean, I heard you'd killed Balder the Fair." "I never did," snapped Loki crossly. "Well, no one ever proved I did. What happened to the presumption of innocence? Besides, he was supposed to be invulnerable. Was it my fault that he wasn't?" murder loki innocence Joanne Harris
f90eb65 Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin. useful-idiots innocence G.K. Chesterton
4ace37a Why do we have this desire to tease the innocent? Is it envy? innocent innocence teasing Graham Greene
0f7de3d If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents? injustice system innocence justice police Michael Connelly
dd102c8 You loved people and you came to depend on their being there. but people died or changed or went away and it hurt too much. The only way to avoid that poin was not to love anyone, and not to let anyone get too close or too important. The secret of not being hurt like this again, I decided, was never depending on anyone, never needing, never loving. It is the last dream of children, to be forever untouched. innocence Audre Lorde
d97909d There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for me to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed or enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. injustice morality innocent law innocence justice guilt morals values Ayn Rand
8190f7f Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it is right. writing innocence Anne Lamott
a4cd3ee Obedient to no man, dependent only on weather and season, without a goal before them or a roof above them, owning nothing, open to every whim of fate, the homeless wanderers lead their childlike, brave, shabby existence. They are the sons of Adam, who was driven out of Paradise; the brothers of the animals, of innocence. Out of heaven's hand they accept what is given them from moment to moment: sun, rain, fog, snow, warmth, cold, comfort, and hardship; time does not exist for them and neither does history, or ambition, or that bizarre idol called progress and evolution, in which houseowners believe so desperately. A wayfarer may be delicate or crude, artful or awkward, brave or cowardly--he is always a child at heart, living in the first day of creation, before the beginning of the history of the world, his life always guided by a few simple instincts and needs. He may be intelligent or stupid; he may be deeply aware of the fleeting fragility of all living things, of how pettily and fearfully each living creature carries its bit of warm blood through the glaciers of cosmic space, or he may merely follow the commands of his poor stomach with childlike greed--he is always the opponent, the deadly enemy of the established proprietor, who hates him, despises him, or fears him, because he does not wish to be reminded that all existence is transitory, that life is constantly wilting, that merciless icy death fills the cosmos all around. freedom death wayfarer wanderer innocence Hermann Hesse
3e127e6 "I'm not comfortable in this stadium," I explained, trying to look calm. "I know. And you hate Fang looking at those girls. But we're still having fun, and Fang still loves you, and you'll still save the world. Okay?" jealousy love kid girl innocence saving-the-world James Patterson
bea7093 The world's crawling with stupid, innocent girls, and I'm just one of them, self-consciously chasing after dreams that will never come true. naivete dreaming innocence Haruki Murakami
b194495 I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. maturity corruption innocence losing Orson Scott Card
34167bf Some boys walk by and you cry, seeing them. They feel good, they look good, they are good. Oh, they're not above peeing off a bridge, or stealing an occasional dime-store pencil sharpener; it's not that. It's just, you know, seeing them pass, that's how they'll be all their life; they'll get hit, hurt, cut, bruised, and always wonder why, why does it happen? how can it happen to pain good goodness people-will-hurt-you hurt cry description innocence vulnerable sad Ray Bradbury
5711d83 "Well, did he do it?" She always asked the irrelevant question. It didn't matter in terms of the strategy of the case whether the defendant "did it" or not. What mattered was the evidence against him -- the proof -- and if and how it could be neutralized. My job was to bury the proof, to color the proof a shade of gray. Gray was the color of reasonable doubt." defense reasonable-doubt criminal-law justice-system evidence innocence justice guilt Michael Connelly
b9864e4 "When Aziza first spotted Mariam in the morning, her eyes always sprang open, and she began mewling and squirming in her mother's grip. She thrust her arms toward Mariam, demanding to be held, her tiny hands opening and closing urgently, on her face a look of both adoration and quivering anxiety... "Why have you pinned your little heart to an old, ugly hag like me?" Mariam would murmur into Aziza's hair... "What have I got to give you?" But Aziza only muttered contentedly and dug her face in deeper. And when she did that, Mariam swooned. Her eyes watered. Her heart took flight. And she marveled at how, after all these years of rattling loose, she had found in this little creature the first true connection in her life of false, failed connections." love innocence Khaled Hosseini
40c8506 It takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare. madness heroes strength innocence memory James Baldwin
f06f865 "You know what my father said about innocent clients? ... He said the scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you fuck up and he goes to prison, it'll scar you for life ... He said there is no in-between with an innocent client. No negotiation, no plea bargain, no middle ground. There's only one verdict. You have to put an NG up on the scoreboard. There's no other verdict but not guilty." Levin nodded thoughtfully. "The bottom line was my old man was a damn good lawyer and he didn't like having innocent clients," I said. "I'm not sure I do, either." -- responsibility risk fear criminal-law justice-system innocence justice guilt Michael Connelly
80d9c3b There is something about Christmas that requires a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I wonder if could rent one for the holidays. When I was tiny we would by a real tree and stay up late drinking hot chocolate and finding just the right place for the special decorations. It seems like my parents gave up the magic when I figured out the Santa lie. Maybe I shouldn't have told them I knew where the presents really came from. It broke their hearts. santa christmas innocence Laurie Halse Anderson
062d07d "What do you call yourself?" the Fawn said at last. Such a soft sweet voice it had! "I wish I knew!" thought poor Alice. She answered, rather sadly, "Nothing, just now." "Think again," it said: "that won't do." Alice thought, but nothing came of it. "Please, would you tell me what you call yourself?" she said timidly, "I think that might help a little." "I'll tell you, if you'll come a little further on," the Fawn said. "I can't remember here." So they walked on together through the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice's arms. "I'm a Fawn!" it cried out in a voice of delight. "And dear me, you're a human child!" A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed." fear fawn deer wonderland purity innocence danger survival instinct Lewis Carroll
b229e1b If Innocent is happy, it is because he is innocent. If he can defy the conventions, it is just because he can keep the commandments. It is just because he does not want to kill but to excite to life that a pistol is still as exciting to him as it is to a schoolboy. It is just because he does not want to steal, because he does not covet his neighbour's goods, that he has captured the trick (oh, how we all long for it!), the trick of coveting his own goods. It is just because he does not want to commit adultery that he achieves the romance of sex; it is just because he loves one wife that he has a hundred honeymoons. innocence G.K. Chesterton
20c1bd4 She thought of the recurrent waves of pain that for some reason or other she and her husband had had to endure; of the invisible giants hurting her boy in some unimaginable fashion; of the incalculable amount of tenderness contained in the world; of the fate of this tenderness, which is either crushed or wasted, or transformed into madness; of neglected children humming to themselves in unswept corners; of beautiful weeds that cannot hide from the farmer. innocence insanity Vladimir Nabokov
238760a and yet a child's utter innocence is but its blank ignorance, and the innocence more or less wanes as intelligence waxes. intelligence herman-melville sailor innocence Herman Melville
c212f54 Voll Bluten steht der Pfirsichbaum nicht jede wachst zur Frucht sie schimmern hell wie Rosenschaum durch Blau und Wolkenflucht. Wie Bluten geh'n Gedanken auf hundert an jedem Tag -- lass' bluhen, lass' dem Ding den Lauf frag' nicht nach dem Ertrag! Es muss auch Spiel und Unschuld sein und Blutenuberfluss sonst war' die Welt uns viel zu klein und Leben kein Genuss. poetry beauty peach-tree blossoms enjoyment trees growth metaphors innocence ideas Hermann Hesse
8a637d3 There were times he thought it would have been far better to never have known. Yet he continued to return to his core principle: that, in every situation, knowledge was better than ignorance. However agonizing, it was necessary to confront the facts. Only through knowing could a person become strong. men women innocence ignorance knowledge Haruki Murakami
6c17360 Children are meant to grow up, and not to become Peter Pans. Not to lose innocence and wonder, but to proceed on the appointed journey: that journey upon which it is certainly not better to travel hopefully than to arrive, though we must travel hopefully if we are to arrive. hope growing-up innocence journey J.R.R. Tolkien
7205990 "Most of us hoped to be able to trust. When we were little we did not yet know the human invention of the lie - not only that of lying with words but that of lying with one's voice, one's gesture, one's eyes, one's facial expression. How should the child be prepared for this specifically human ingenuity: the lie? Most of us are awakened, some more and some less brutally, to the fact that people often do not mean what they say or say the opposite of what they mean. And not only "people," but the very people we trusted most - our parents, teachers, leaders." hope truth disillusionment society innocence lie Erich Fromm
aedfb27 I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in a way the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief. blacks jail justice-system race-relations incarceration innocence justice prison guilt Paul Beatty
d239cd8 "I love her with all my soul. Why, she is a child! She's a child now -- a real child. Oh! you know nothing about it at all, I see." "And are you assured, at the same time, that you love Aglaya too?" "Yes -- yes -- oh; yes!" "How so? Do you want to make out that you love them BOTH?" "Yes -- yes -- both! I do!" "Excuse me, prince, but think what you are saying! Recollect yourself!" "Without Aglaya -- I -- I MUST see Aglaya! -- I shall die in my sleep very soon -- I thought I was dying in my sleep last night. Oh! if Aglaya only knew all -- I mean really, REALLY all! Because she must know ALL -- that's the first condition towards understanding. Why cannot we ever know all about another, especially when that other has been guilty? But I don't know what I'm talking about -- I'm so confused. You pained me so dreadfully. Surely -- surely Aglaya has not the same expression now as she had at the moment when she ran away? Oh, yes! I am guilty and I know it -- I know it! Probably I am in fault all round -- I don't quite know how -- but I am in fault, no doubt. There is something else, but I cannot explain it to you, Evgenie Pavlovitch. I have no words; but Aglaya will understand. I have always believed Aglaya will understand -- I am assured she will." "No, prince, she will not. Aglaya loved like a woman, like a human being, not like an abstract spirit. Do you know what, my poor prince? The most probable explanation of the matter is that you never loved either the one or the other in reality." love innocence Fyodor Dostoyevsky
93db366 Here, by the grace of God and an inside straight, we have a personality untouched by the psychotic taboos of our tribe - and you want to turn him into a carbon copy of every fourth-rate conformist in this frightened land! Why don't you go whole hog? Get him a brief case and make him carry it wherever he goes - make him feel shame if he doesn't have it. man personality human god nudity taboo-breaking taboos martian tribe grace work-ethic psychotic naked society innocence mars shame Robert A. Heinlein
7431128 "You are an intriguing combination, half child, half seductress, half angel." I laughed sort and bitterly. "That's what all men like to think about women. Little girls they have to take care of--when I know for a fact it is the male who is more boy than man." man woman feminist lmao girl innocence child V.C. Andrews
9e20b12 what time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life? love innocence childhood Leo Tolstoy
7e6f7b0 Women do have an affinity for evil, for believing that no woman is to be trusted, but that some men are too innocent to protect themselves. men women trust innocence William Faulkner
bb6483d Dalgliesh was too experienced to assume that fear implied guilt; it was often the most innocent who were the most terrified. innocence P.D. James
8982bb4 "Then Deborah stood at the wicket gate, the boundary, and there was a woman with outstretched hand, demanding tickets. "Pass through," she said when Deborah reached her. "We saw you coming." The wicket gate became a turnstile. Deborah pushed against it and there was no resistance, she was through. "What is it?" she asked. "Am I really here at last? Is this the bottom of the pool?" "It could be," smiled the woman. "There are so many ways. You just happened to choose this one." Other people were pressing to come through. They had no faces, they were only shadows. Deborah stood aside to let them by, and in a moment they had gone, all phantoms. "Why only now, tonight?" asked Deborah. "Why not in the afternoon, when I came to the pool?" "It's a trick," said the woman. "You seize on the moment in time. We were here this afternoon. We're always here. Our life goes on around you, but nobody knows it. The trick's easier by night, that's all." "Am I dreaming, then?" asked Deborah. "No," said the woman, "this isn't a dream. And it isn't death, either. It's the secret world." The secret world... It was something Deborah had always known, and now the pattern was complete. The memory of it, and the relief, were so tremendous that something seemed to burst inside her heart. "Of course..." she said, "of course..." and everything that had ever been fell into place. There was no disharmony. The joy was indescribable, and the surge of feeling, like wings about her in the air, lifted her away from the turnstile and the woman, and she had all knowledge. That was it - the invasion of knowledge. ("The Pool")" time dream secret death imagination fantasy innocence knowledge night creativity Daphne du Maurier
83958e4 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. hope philosophy dorothy witch innocence wicked ignorance Gregory Maguire
f321e17 Just as she was unaware of the hidden currents of politics running below the surface of College affairs, so the Scholars, for their part, would have been unable to see the rich seething stew of alliances and enmities and feuds and treaties which was a child's life in Oxford. Children playing together: how pleasant to see! What could be more innocent and charming? irony politics rivalry innocence Philip Pullman
7d45e39 Last night I wept. I wept because the process by which I have become woman was painful. I wept because I was no longer a child with a child's blind faith. I wept because my eyes were opened to reality. woman reality metamorphosis painful wept growth innocence transformation Anaïs Nin
bce7e5a Isaiah grabs my hand and leads me away from the police...My heart stutters. He's holding my hand. A guy is holding my hand. Touching it. Like his fingers entwined with mine. I've never held a guy's hand before and it feels good. So good. Warm. Strong. Awesome. And it would only be a million times better if the guy holding my hand liked me. romance isaiah innocence rachel Katie McGarry
596f2c0 I can't bear the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom. idealism sodom cynic cynical innocence cynicism disappointment Fyodor Dostoyevsky
d9fed06 Oh, tell me, who first declared, who first proclaimed that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own real interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage, he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else... . Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child! liberation reticence privacy innocence self-interest shame Fyodor Dostoyevsky
a042c8c Innocence is a bleeding wound without a bandage, a wound that opens with every casual knock from casual passers-by. Experience is an armour. life-lessons innocence Hilary Mantel
67137bc The next morning the sea was calm again, the sun was shining, and the water was so blue and innocent a man might never know that under it my brother floated, dead with all his men. drowning morning innocence duplicity sea lie ocean George R.R. Martin
f9dc277 In innocence there is no strength against evil [...] but there is strength in it for good. strength innocence Ursula K. Le Guin
b31badc Who has believed in the world and died with its name on his lips? loss hope wise innocence Jack Kerouac
7a32f33 Did he who made the lamb make thee? christianity religion god william-blake innocence William Blake
0c3789a "Nobody can stay in the garden of Eden," Jacques said. And then: "I wonder why." ... Everyone, after all, goes the same dark road--and the road has a trick of being most dark, most treacherous, when it seems most bright--and it's true that nobody stays in the garden of Eden. ... Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another type of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of the pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare." madness pain heroes strength life-choices innocence-lost garden-of-eden innocence James Baldwin
8f94443 I bambini sono senza passato ed e questo tutto il mistero dell'innocenza magica del loro sorriso... innocence smile Milan Kundera
ae23b74 When shame is met with compassion and not received as confirmation of our guilt, we can begin to see how slant a lens it has had us looking through. That awareness lets us step back far enough to see that if we can let it go, we will see ourselves as clean where we once thought we were dirty. We will remember our innocence. We will see how our shame supported a system in which the perpetrators were protected and we bore the brunt of their offense -- first in its actuality, then again in carrying their shame for it. If the method we chose to try to beat out shame was perfectionism, we can relax now, shake the burden off our shoulders, and give ourselves a chance to loosen up and make some errors. Hallelujah! Our freedom will not come from tireless effort and getting it all exactly right. freedom abusers perpetrators abuser burdens-of-the-past imperfect peptrator perfectly-imperfect false-guilt recovery-from-abuse healing-from-abuse innocence-lost offense child-rape healing-insights perfectionism healing innocence shame recovery guilt child-sexual-abuse incest sexual-abuse survivors Maureen Brady
cc3de6a The innocence of such children doesn't answer our deepest questions about this vale of tears to which we are condemned, but it helps to dispel them. That is the secret to family life. family innocence Joyce Carol Oates
b6bdb95 Cosette, by learning that she was beautiful, lost the grace of not knowing it; an exquisite grace, for beauty heightened by artlessness is ineffable, and nothing is so adorable as dazzling innocence, going on her way, and holding in her hand, all unconsciousness, the key of a paradise. les-misérables grace innocence Victor Hugo
22efa08 I know that age, it's a particularly obstinate one, and a thousand bogies won't make you fear the future. A pity we can't change over. youth naivete innocence Daphne du Maurier
59e5eb5 Thus the Government of our Virtue was broken and I exchang'd the Place of Friend for that unmusical harsh-sounding Title of Whore. love innocence sexuality Daniel Defoe
eb1894c I look upon the gift of my life as a wondrous journey. healing-old-fears wondrous-journey soul-journey psyche integration survivor innocence child-sexual-abuse Maureen Brady
9da4d3d When we lose our innocence - when we start feeling the weight of the atmosphere and learn that there's death in the pot - we take leave of our sense. innocence Annie Dillard
8af7854 They killed him because he was too innocent to live. He was young and ignorant and silly and he got involved. He had no more of a notion than any of you what the whole affair's about, and you gave him money and York Harding's books on the East and said, 'Go ahead. Win the East for democracy.' He never saw anything he hadn't heard in a lecture hall, and his writers and his lecturers made a fool of him. war nation-building innocence Graham Greene
43ef9d8 And the sun on the wall of her room, the block of sun with all the tiny flying things in it. When she was little she thought they were the souls of dead insects, still buzzing in the light. imagination perspective sunlight innocence Tim Winton
f8cfbb3 "There's a little war in progress here. There won't be anything left of the place if it goes on at this rate." (But it's hard to feign innocence if you've eaten the apple, he reflected.) "And it looks to me as if it is going to go on, because the French aren't going to give in, and certainly the Arabs aren't, because they can't. They're fighting with their backs the the wall." "I thought maybe you meant you expected a new world war," he lied. "That's the least of my worries. When that comes, we've had it. You can't sit around mooning about Judgement Day. That's just silly. Everybody who ever lived has always had his own private Judgment Day to face anyway, and he still has. As far as that goes, nothing's changed at all." independence judgment-day uprising unrest eden paradise-lost morocco innocence french revolution Paul Bowles
b31eb5c The dead are mute, but the living still have voice with which to protest their innocence. Often their objections are noisy and pious, impossible to refute since the person who could condemn them has been silenced forever. murder innocence Sue Grafton
d23a137 I was so happy that my mother, father, and two brothers had somehow found one another. Perhaps my mother and father have gotten back together, I thought. sierra-leone innocence sad Ishmael Beah
f6a0f8c I believe the intensity of the pity you feel for an animal has to do with how it evokes pity for yourself.... Innocence is something we humans pass through and leave behind, unable to return. But animals live and die in that state, and seeing innocence violated in the form of cruelty to a mere duck can seem like the most barbaric act in the world. cruelty-to-animals barbarism cruelty animals innocence pity Sigrid Nunez
7b68916 "How are babies made?" Visibly startled, Jordan turned and opened his mouth, as if he intended to speak, but for some reason no words came out. At first Alexandra was puzzled by his involuntary silence, but then understanding dawned. She shook her head and sighed with sympathy for their mutual plight. " You don't know either, do you?" naivete innocence Judith McNaught
2ca9e5f "COME HOME, TENAR! COME HOME!" In the deep valley, in the twilight, the apple trees were on the eve of blossoming; here and there among the shadowed boughs one flower had opened early, rose and white, like a faint star. Down the orchard aisles, in the thick, new, wet grass, the little girl ran for the joy of running; hearing the call she did not come at once, but made a long circle before she turned her face toward home. The mother waiting in the doorway of the hut, with the firelight behind her, watched the tiny figure running and bobbing like a bit of thistledown blown over the darkening grass beneath the trees." motherhood loss sorrow ends innocence childhood Ursula K. Le Guin
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