Innocence Quotes - Page 3

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  Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Honesty, Integrity, Writing

  1847; quoted by propagandist and language maven William Safire, New York Times Magazine, 13 December 1998.

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• Artists are people who are subject to irrational convictions of the sacred. Baudelaire said that an artist is a child who has acquired adult capacities and discipline. Art education should help build those capacities and that discipline without messing over the child.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Art, Children, Discipline

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• At that time, I was still in an experimental stage, trying to blend Western drawing techniques and Chinese brushwork together. It was harder for me back then... But that piece is special and important, because it represents vigilance and innocence; the kind of precious innocence only present at the beginning of a new artistic exploration.

  Liu Dan

  Drawing, Chinese, Special

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• Coerced innocence is like an imprisoned lark,--open the door, and it is off forever. The bird that roams through the sky and the groves unrestrained knows how to dodge the hawk and protect itself; but the caged one, the moment it leaves its bars and bolts behind, is pounced upon by the fowler or the vulture.

  Thomas Chandler Haliburton

  Doors, Sky, Bird

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• The practice of Zen mind is beginner's mind. The innocence of the first inquiry—what am I?—is needed throughout Zen practice. The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities. It is the kind of mind which can see things as they are, which step by step and in a flash can realize the original nature of everything.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Nature, Practice, Doubt

  Shunryu Suzuki (2010). “Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind”, p.14, Shambhala Publications

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• When lightning strikes, the mouse is sometimes burned with the farm.

  Phyllis Bottome

  Lightning, Sometimes, Strikes

  Phyllis Bottome (1998). “The Mortal Storm”, p.161, Northwestern University Press

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• Thoughts are just what is. They appear. They're innocent. They're not personal.

  Byron Katie

  Innocent, Katie

  Twitter post from Jun 19, 2013

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• To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence--an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.

  Samuel Johnson

  Eye, Tongue, Virtue

  Samuel Johnson (1761). “The Rambler: In Four Volumes”, p.78

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• Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Crime, Incapable, Suspects

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• Innocence has nothing to dread.

  Jean Racine

  Dread

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 395-96, Phèdre, III. 6, 1922.

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• Never such innocence, Never before or since, As changed itself to past Without a word--the men Leaving the gardens tidy, The thousands of marriages Lasting a little while longer: Never such innocence again.

  Philip Larkin

  Past, Men, Garden

  The Whitsun Weddings (1964) "MCMXIV"

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• Where choice begins, Paradise ends, innocence ends, for what is Paradise but the absence of any need to choose this action?

  Arthur Miller

  Choices, Needs, Paradise

  Arthur Miller (2016). “Collected Essays: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.176, Penguin

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• American movies and music deliver themes of freedom, innocence, and power that appeal to others - partly because America itself was put together out of a multiplicity of national traditions.

  Todd Gitlin

  America, Together, Tradition

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• Something of the child's pure delight in creation survives in every true work of art.

  Roger Scruton

  Art, Children, Delight

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• O innocence, how glorious and happy a portion art thou to the breast that possesses thee! thou fearest neither the eyes nor the tongues of men. Truth, the most powerful of all things, is thy strongest friend; and the brighter the light is in which thou art displayed, the more it discovers thy transcendent beauties.

  Henry Fielding

  Art, Powerful, Eye

  Henry Fielding (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry Fielding (Illustrated)”, p.1596, Delphi Classics

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• Happy the innocent whose equal thoughts are free from anguish as they are from faults.

  Edmund Waller

  Faults, Innocent, Equal

  Edmund Waller (1744). “Sammlung”, p.219

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• The most effective coquetry is innocence.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Coquetry

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• Making strides in areas unencumbered by hard-won expectation feels effervescent. By switching into child-mode, shuffling the cortex, we remember our innocence, when we knew less. These are the essentials of continued aesthetic discovery.

  Sara Genn

  Children, Discovery, Expectations

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• I am not innocent. Innocence is a science of the sublime. And I am only at the very beginning of the apprenticeship.

  Helene Cixous

  Sublime, Innocent, Apprenticeship

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• How but in custom and in ceremony are innocence and beauty born?

  William Butler Yeats

  Born, Ceremony, Customs

  William Butler Yeats (2008). “COLLECTED POEMS OF W.B. YEATS”, p.478, Simon and Schuster

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• The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a wheel rolling on its own, a prime movement, a sacred Yes.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Children, New Beginnings, Games

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• Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Long, Language, Pleasure

  Jean Baudrillard (1990). “Cool Memories”, p.66, Verso

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• The innocent are so few that two of them seldom meet - when they do meet, their victims lie strewn all round.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Lying, Two, Literature

  Elizabeth Bowen (1938). “The death of the heart”, Viking Pr

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• Bad company is as instructive as licentiousness. One makes up for the loss of one's innocence with the loss of one's prejudices.

  Denis Diderot

  Loss, Religion, Prejudice

  "Rameau's Nephew". Book by Denis Diderot, 1805.

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• Power is something of which I am convinced there is no innocence this side of the womb.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Power, Sides, Womb

  Nadine Gordimer (1956). “Six Feet of the Country: Fifteen Short Stories”

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