Innocence Quotes

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!The world forgetting, by the world forgot.Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d

~ Alexander Pope

They've done it before and they'll do it again and when they do it -- seems that only the children weep. Good night.

~ Harper Lee

There is an innocence in admiration: it occurs in one who has not yet realized that they might one day be admired.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.

~ Joan Didion

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.

~ J.d. Salinger

The others cast themselves down upon the fragrant grass, but Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured for ever. He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful. In winter here no heart could mourn for summer or for spring. No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lórien, there was no stain.

~ J.r.r. Tolkien

No one loses their innocence. It is either taken or given away willingly.

~ Tiffany Madison

I'm not...' Angharad began, but then she thought. Not what? Not a bad person? Perhaps. But had she never known anger? Never held unkind thoughts? The stranger's observation was valid. No one was innocent of darkness.

~ Charles De Lint

You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her.

~ Lionel Shriver

That was my first instinct -- to protect him. It never occurred to me that there was a greater need to protect 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.

~ Graham Greene

Love wasn't to be measured, much less restricted, by methodology. Love wasn't a method. Love was a faculty of the highest order, imagined or unimagined. Love wasn't an activity. Love was an experience. Love was the second coming of innocence.

~ Rob Inclan

In any case, you must remember, my dearest, that the main strength of innocence is innocence itself. farewell.

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.

~ Ouida

The truth is, not one of is innocent. We all have sins to confess.

~ C.w. Gortner

I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun warmed, flower bordered path.

~ André Gide

Soul of a victim tends to prove her innocence.

~ Toba Beta

I want to get out of here means I want to be innocent.

~ Kathy Acker

How could he maintain the apology in his eyes without getting carried away by her cherubic innocence?

~ Faraaz Kazi

We speak of love when we destroy nature.It sounds like innocence of cruel arrogance.

~ Toba Beta

Why do we have this desire to tease the innocent? Is it envy?

~ Graham Greene

Those who will never be fooled can never be delighted, because without self-forgetfulness there can be no delight, and this is a great and grievous loss.

~ Alan Jacobs

MCMXIVThose long uneven linesStanding as patientlyAs if they were stretched outsideThe Oval or Villa Park,The crowns of hats, the sunOn moustached archaic facesGrinning as if it were allAn August Bank Holiday lark;And the shut shops, the bleachedEstablished names on the sunblinds,The farthings and sovereigns,And dark-clothed children at playCalled after kings and queens,The tin advertisementsFor cocoa and twist, and the pubsWide open all day--And the countryside not caring:The place names all hazed overWith flowering grasses, and fieldsShadowing Domesday linesUnder wheat's restless silence;The differently-dressed servantsWith tiny rooms in huge houses,The dust behind limousines;Never such innocence,Never before or since,As changed itself to pastWithout a word--the menLeaving the gardens tidy,The thousands of marriages,Lasting a little while longer:Never such innocence again.

~ Philip Larkin

I was very lighthearted. This often the way when the abandonment of personal responsibility is enforced: neither wronged innocence or just guilt can seriously impair the sensation of freedom one has.

~ Anthony Burgess

There are many more layers to innocence than one might ever imagine, and we are ever unaware of them until each barrier is breached.

~ Paula Reed

In Paris, Julien’s position with regard to Madame de Renal would very soon have been simplified; but in Paris love is the child of the novels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would have found in three or four novels, and even in the lyrics of the Gymnase, a clear statement of their situation. The novels would have outlined for them the part to be played, shown them the model to copy; and this model, sooner or later, albeit without the slightest pleasure, and perhaps with reluctance, vanity would have compelled Julien to follow.In a small town of the Aveyron or the Pyrenees, the slightest incident would have been made decisive by the ardour of the climate. Beneath our more sombre skies, a penniless young man, who is ambitious only because the refinement of his nature puts him in need of some of those pleasures which money provides, is in daily contact with a woman of thirty who is sincerely virtuous, occupied with her children, and never looks to novels for examples of conduct. Everything goes slowly, everything happens by degrees in the provinces: life is more natural.

~ Stendhal

Innocence is what is precious about life. No other experience can compare. Cherish it.

~ Brent M. Jones

i hugged myself as a child & told Myself that everything was perfect in the petrichor The smell of pure innocence & earthy & earthly Innocence that stays in the clothes I only wear on good days…

~ Jay Sheets

Monsieur, innocence is its own crown. Innocence has no truck with highness. It is as august in rags as it is draped in the fleur-de-lis.

~ Victor Hugo

The solid earth sways like the treacherous sea beneath the feet of men and spirits alike when the innocent are slain in the name of law, and their wrongs are undone by slandering the pure of heart.

~ George Bernard Shaw

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?

~ Judith Mcnaught

I think the only reason I never lost my mind is that I knew I was innocent. That wasn't a happy thought, so the dementors couldn't suck it out of me...but it kept me sane and knowing who I am...helped me keep my powers...

~ J.k. Rowling

For such a worldly, surly bastard, Bas had always been incredibly innocent. Always seen the best in people.

~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

So many lives are in bitterness today not just because of how their pasts were abused, but how they think they were innocent.

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Do you know where you were on Thursday evening at about eight o'clock last week, and who you were with, and what you were doing? Are you absolutely certain beyond any shadow of a doubt? Would you bet your life on it? If there is any possibility—no matter how slim or remote—that you could possibly be mistaken about such a thing, you are the kind of person who should never agree to talk to the police under just about any circumstances for as long as you live. And that includes practically everybody.

~ James Duane

The main dry storage room of Sin du Jour is filled with a light unseen on Earth since a time of abject innocence.And that was long ago, indeed.

~ Matt Wallace

The ship told you the guilty systems recognizes no innocents. I'd say it does. It recognizes the innocence... only to violate it.

~ Ian M. Banks

Until that day at the dress department Lucie had been many things to me: a child, a source of comfort, a balm, an escape from myself; she was literally everything for me – but a woman. Our love in the physical sense of the word had proceeded no further than the kissing stage. And even the way she kissed was childish (I'd fallen in love with those kisses, long but chaste, with dry closed lips counting each other's fine striations as they touched in emotion).In short, until then I had felt tenderness for Lucie, but no sensual desire; I'd grown so accustomed to its absence that I wasn't even conscious of it; my relationship with Lucie seemed so beautiful that I could never have dreamed anything was missing. Everything fit so harmoniously together: Lucie, her monastically gray clothes, and my monastically chaste relation with her.

~ Milan Kundera

Yet I believe, as I say, that it was precisely this underhand act that gave birth to her vitriol, for people are at their least forgiving when they themselves have been underhand, as though they would exact their innocence from you at any price.

~ Rachel Cusk

Her face lit up, illuminated by the enlightenment of recognition and the innocence of surprise.

~ Joss Sheldon

His [Vyāsadeva's] son was a great devotee, an equibalanced monist, whose mind was always concentrated in monism. He was transcendental to mundane activities, but being unexposed, he appeared like an ignorant person.

~ A.c. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda