Innocence Quotes - Page 33

• It leaned forward, elbows on its knees, all amusement vanishing from its features, leaving its chiseled visage quietly regal, dignified. "I give you my word, Gabrielle O'Callaghan," it said softly. "I will protect you." "Right. The word of the blackest fairy, the legendary liar, the great deceiver," she mocked. How dare it offer its word like it might actually mean something? A muscle leapt in its jaw. "That is not all I have been, Gabrielle. I have been, and am, many things." "Oh, of course, silly me, I left out consummate seducer and ravager of innocence.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Liars, Silly, Mean

  Karen Marie Moning (2004). “The Immortal Highlander”, p.70, Delacorte Press

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• And his knowledge remained woefully incomplete, Harry! That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped.

  J. K. Rowling

  Loyalty, Children, House

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• Every day my conscience makes confession relying on the hope of Your mercy as more to be trusted than its own innocence.

  Saint Augustine

  Mercy, Confession, Trusted

  Saint Augustine (1998). “The Confessions”, p.181, OUP Oxford

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• This isn't about guilt or innocence, he says. The dinosaurs weren't morally good or bad, but they're all dead.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Guilt, Dinosaurs

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• Look past the violence. There is a wonderful brimming spirit of innocence and fun.

  Don DeLillo

  Fun, Past, Looks

  Don DeLillo (1985). “White noise”, Viking Pr

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• It is, I suppose, the common grief of children at having to protect their parents from reality. It is bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults grow into, that terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mire of childhood.

  Katherine Dunn

  Children, Grief, Reality

  FaceBook post by Katherine Dunn from Aug 29, 2016

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• India has known the innocence and insouciance of childhood, the passion and abandon of youth, and the ripe wisdom of maturity that comes from long experience of pain and pleasure; and over and over a gain she has renewed her childhood and youth and age

  Jawaharlal Nehru

  Pain, Passion, Maturity

  Jawaharlal Nehru (1961). “The Quintessence of Nehru”

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• Drifting snowflakes brushed her face as light as lover’s kisses, and melted on her cheeks. At the center of the garden, beside the statue of the weeping woman that lay broken and half-buried on the ground, she turned her face up to the sky and closed her eyes. She could feel the snow on her lashes, taste it on her lips. It was the taste of Winterfell. The taste of innocence. The taste of dreams.

  George R. R. Martin

  Dream, Eye, Kissing

  George R. R. Martin (2003). “A Storm of Swords: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Three”, p.1098, Bantam

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• Where were you born?" "On a battlefield," [Yossarian] answered. "No, no. In what state were you born?" "In a state of innocence.

  Joseph Heller

  States, Born, Battlefields

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• Forever, reading has been central, the necessary fix, the support system. Her life has been informed by reading. She has read not just for distraction, sustenance, to pass the time, but she has read in a state of primal innocence, reading for enlightenment, for instruction, even. ... She is as much a product of what she has read as of the way in which she has lived; she is like millions of others built by books, for whom books are an essential foodstuff, who could starve without.

  Penelope Lively

  Book, Reading, Support Systems

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• The beloved's innocence brutalizes the lover. As the singing of a mad person behind you on the train enrages you, its beautiful animal-like teeth shining amid black planes of paint. As Helen enrages history. Senza uscita.

  Anne Carson

  Beautiful, Animal, Mad

  Anne Carson (2015). “Plainwater: Essays and Poetry”, p.88, Vintage

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• 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.

  Piers Anthony

  Children, Broken, Suffering

  Piers Anthony (2002). “Centaur Aisle”, p.7, Del Rey

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• What a quality of innocence people have when they don't expect to be harmed.

  Hanif Kureishi

  People, Quality

  Hanif Kureishi (2010). “Intimacy”, p.9, Faber & Faber

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• We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when we’re faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off.

  Federico Fellini

  Purity And Innocence, Cynical, Mask

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• Why then you're as mad as me. No, madder. For I distrust 'reality' and its moron mother, the universe, while you fasten your innocence to fallible devices which pretend at happy endings.

  Ray Bradbury

  Mother, Reality, Mad

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• Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it is right.

  Anne Lamott

  Beautiful, Writing, Belief

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.205, Anchor

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• He wanted to care, and he could not care. For he had gone away and he could never go back anymore. The gates were closed, the sun was down, and there was no beauty left but the gray beauty of steel that withstands all time. Even the grief he could have borne was left behind in the country of youth, of illusion, of the richness of life, where his winter dreams had flourished.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Dream, Country, Growing Up

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2004). “The Complete Short Stories, Essays, and a Play”, p.530, Simon and Schuster

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• For I see that then I was still all in a state of innocence, but that innocence, once lost, is lost forever.

  Susan Hill

  Forever, Lost, States

  Susan Hill (1986). “The Woman in Black”

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• A small child has no ambitions, he has no desires. He is so absorbed in the moment - a bird on the wing catches his eye so totally; just a butterfly, its beautiful colors, and he is enchanted; the rainbow in the sky... and he cannot conceive that there can be anything more significant, richer than this rainbow. And the night full of stars, stars beyond stars... Innocence is rich, it is full, it is pure.

  Rajneesh

  Beautiful, Stars, Children

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• Those who improve with age embrace the power of personal growth and personal achievement and begin to replace youth with wisdom, innocence with understanding, and lack of purpose with self-actualization.

  Robert Foster Bennett

  Birthday, Self, Achievement

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• There was a serenity about him always that had the look of innocence, when, technically, the word was no longer applicable.

  Virginia Woolf

  Serenity, Looks

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1146, Delphi Classics

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• 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.

  Jane Yolen

  Hate, Book, Fire

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• I learned that it is better, a thousandfold , for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it.

  George MacDonald

  Hero, Fall, Pride

  "MacDonalds’ Fairy-Tale Treasure Chest".

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• ... the connection between imperial politics and culture is astonishingly direct. American attitudes to American "greatness", to hierarchies of race, to the perils of "other" revolutions (the American revolution being considered unique and somehow unrepeatable anywhere else in the world) have remained constant, have dictated, have obscured, the realities of empire, while apologists for overseas American interests have insisted on American innocence, doing good, fighting for freedom.

  Edward Said

  Attitude, Fighting, Reality

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• Dearest Charles-- I found a box of this paper at the back of a bureau so I must write to you as I am mourning for my lost innocence. It never looked like living. The doctors despaired of it from the start... I am never quite alone. Members of my family keep turning up and collecting luggage and going away again, but the white raspberries are ripe. I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don't want him to meet a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits. Love or what you will. S.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Love, Writing, Italian

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