Home > Topic > the innocence
1 " The knowledge of secrets is a very enticing ship, a very tempting voyage, and one thinks that the highest attainment in life is to find out hidden truths, to seek out what is truth, to know what are all lies; to uncover, to discover and to rediscover, to dig up, to expose, to reveal... But secrets can go on forever, for an eternity! For as vast as the universe is, so are the secrets therein! And one can lose, because of that thought that in the secrets, everything is to be gained! But I can see, that all the knowledge of hidden things, all the knowledge in the universe, is not nearly as valuable and as worthy as the innocence of one's soul. And we are not directed unto good things through our ability to scavenge or to hunt or to decipher or to sail! Or to fly! But we are directed unto good things, through sovereign providence! He is more worthy- the innocent soul who has a simple faith in what he believes in- than the one who has found out all the dark secrets about what the other man has put his faith in! And it is far more profitable for a man to be healthy, to have a long, long life, loved ones that are blessed with these blessings all the same, much love and happiness and safety! It is far more profitable for a man to be able to remain innocent and have love and be healthy and to be able to watch his loved ones in good health and in good love, than for a man to uncover all the secrets of the universe! A single love, a single faith, a single trust, and one hope- these are far, far better things to aspire to have! And this– this is the biggest secret! "
― C. JoyBell C.
2 " Death had been more pitiful to them than longer life would have been. It had taken the one in the loyalty of love, and the other in the innocence of faith, from a world which for love has no recompense and for faith no fulfillment. "
― Ouida , A Dog of Flanders
3 " From p. 40 of Signet Edition of Thomas Wolfe's _You Can't Go Home Again_ (1940):Some things will never change. Some things will always be the same. Lean down your ear upon the earth and listen.The voice of forest water in the night, a woman's laughter in the dark, the clean, hard rattle of raked gravel, the cricketing stitch of midday in hot meadows, the delicate web of children's voices in bright air--these things will never change.The glitter of sunlight on roughened water, the glory of the stars, the innocence of morning, the smell of the sea in harbors, the feathery blur and smoky buddings of young boughs, and something there that comes and goes and never can be captured, the thorn of spring, the sharp and tongueless cry--these things will always be the same.All things belonging to the earth will never change--the leaf, the blade, the flower, the wind that cries and sleeps and wakes again, the trees whose stiff arms clash and tremble in the dark, and the dust of lovers long since buried in the earth--all things proceeding from the earth to seasons, all things that lapse and change and come again upon the earth--these things will always be the same, for they come up from the earth that never changes, they go back into the earth that lasts forever. Only the earth endures, but it endures forever.The tarantula, the adder, and the asp will also never change. Pain and death will always be the same. But under the pavements trembling like a pulse, under the buildings trembling like a cry, under the waste of time, under the hoof of the beast above the broken bones of cities, there will be something growing like a flower, something bursting from the earth again, forever deathless, faithful, coming into life again like April. "
― Thomas Wolfe , You Can't Go Home Again
4 " There is a little furnace within every heart that burns pain. It is formed by a masonry of scars as tick by tick the tireless mechanics of life strip the innocence bestowed upon us at birth. There are some in whom life builds the furnace small and controllable, a passionate heat to burn off the losses, the harsh words and petty disappointments, leaving us cleaner for it. There are others. There are those whose innocence is assaulted early and with such brutality, that it goes beyond all the boundaries of deities and angels to stray into the world of unfettered evil. They build their furnaces differently. "
5 " When our consciousness has become a haven of illusions, our mind may have a hard time to fight the maze in our thinking. Only anchor points from our past and the innocence of our childhood might give back the core of what we are. (“Not without the past”) "
― Erik Pevernagie
6 " We violate the innocence of things in the name of rationality so we can wander about, uninterrupted, in our search for passion and sentiment. "
― Marlena de Blasi , A Thousand Days in Venice
7 " To injure, ignore, disrespect, and violate the innocence of a child are among the greatest evils known to man. "
― Billy Graham , Billy Graham in Quotes
8 " The television, iPod, and Internet have trespassed upon the innocence of America’s children, while preoccupied mothers and dispassionate fathers stare aghast wondering what went wrong. They don’t stop to think of their own contributions to the persuasions influencing their children. After all, where do kids as young as elementary age get money to rent rock videos and the latest rap DVDs? "
9 " Love has always been the chief business of my life, the only thing I have thought—no, felt—supremely worth while, and I don’t pretend that this experience was not succeeded by others. But at that time, I was innocent, with the innocence of ignorance, I didn’t know what was happening to me. I was without consciousness, that is to say, more utterly absorbed than was ever possible again. For after that first time there was always part of me standing aside, comparing, analysing, objecting: ‘Is this real? Is this sincere?’ All the world of my predecessors was there before me, taking, as it were, the bread out of my mouth. Was this stab in my heart, this rapture, really mine or had I merely read about it? For every feeling, every vicissitude of my passion, there would spring into my mind a quotation from the poets. Shakespeare or Donne or Heine had the exact phrase for it. Comforting, perhaps, but enraging too. Nothing ever seemed spontaneously my own. As the blood dripped from the wound, there was always part of me to watch with a smile and a sneer: ‘Literature! Mere literature! Nothing to make a fuss about!’ And then I would add, ‘But so Mercutio jested as he died! "
― , Olivia
10 " The primary thing that people are going to try to take away from you— is the purity of your happiness. Rare is it to find in someone a pure happiness. A happiness so innocent, so spontaneous and so raw... it is the way we are born but it is most often not the way that we die. The world comes in and tries to take that away from you. People come in and try to take that away from you. I have learned not to jump into the pigsty with them. You have to protect the purity of your happiness and the innocence of your joy. People WILL try to take it away. Don't go there, don't let them. Keep what is yours. "
11 " The obedience of Christ was far more acceptable to God, than the innocence of Adam; so that a thousand such as Adam could not have equalled Christ alone. For however he, had he continued in the state of innocence, would have left us an hereditary righteousness, of which we should have been possessed: notwithstanding, unspeakably greater, and more excellent, is our union with God in Christ, since he being made man, hath so purified and exalted the human nature in himself, that the primitive state of Adam is not once to be compared with it. "
― Johann Arndt , Johann Arndt: True Christianity
12 " He smiles at her before ever opening his eyes. The innocence in his face ensnares. Wraps her heart in a cocoon.They did this to him. The Society. Constructed that smile with malicious expectations. Now she must rip it off his face. Because she doesn’t deserve his love. Or Gage’s. This madness coils around her throat, darkening every inch of her soul. "
― Laura Kreitzer , Burning Falls (Summer Chronicles, #3)
13 " Be the man who has the spirit of a ruthless tiger, ravaging every dusty corner of my soul.Be the man for whom I will tame myself voluntarily..Be the man who can make me forget my birth date in moments of utter dellusion.Be the man whose arms are my harbor, whose lips are my shore, and whose name is my only salvation.Be the man who erases my past and draws my future with trails of roses and kisses.Be the man who makes me sigh behind the windows of Poetry, longing to be written. Be the man whose cigarette's ashes are confounded with mine.Be the man whose voice moves mountains inside me.Be the man whose eyes devour the innocence within me with every piercing glance.Be the man for whom I will transform exceptions into rules.Be the man who will dare to tear this poem from my hands.The man who will rewrite with the uncertainty of the futur every single one of my verses. "
― Malak El Halabi
14 " ...I knew in the end the guilt of one side did not prove the innocence of the other. "
― Sara Nović , Girl at War
15 " Ah, no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience... "
― Edith Wharton , The Age of Innocence
16 " 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. "
― James Wood
17 " And so it is becomes important to protect the innocence in children, to prolong their understanding of the two worlds, because innocence like any other thing does not have a lastingness and so the idea is to bring them up beyond the concepts of truth and falsehood, leave it to time for it is a valuable teacher and ensure that they come out of it, all of it unscathed. "
18 " We kissed for two hours. Eventually, I led him into my bedroom and pulled off both of our shirts. He stopped me." This might sound weird; it's not typical guy response." I froze, suddenly awkward. " I mean, if I didn't feel the way I do with you I would be all for it, but I kind of think maybe it would be good to wait. I've rushed into sex, and had it be a mistake." He shrugged apologetically. " I mean, if it's safe to assume you are experiencing the same date that I am, then I think we will have time." I was a little flabbergasted and more than a little embarrassed. How could I explain that the idea sounded like a huge relief to me, that I didn't quite understand where the impulse to start taking my clothes off came from? I had had the same experience. I rarely enjoyed first-time sex with partners, largely because I usually did it before I really knew or trusted them. Here was where the difference between what I knew and did remained wide. The shame I felt wash over me was tinged with that hatred of my own innocence. Was I still so green? So unconfident? Had I gone straight out of the extremity of sex work to the innocence of my adolescence? Where was my self-knowledge? Still, I was relieved. " Of course. I agree totally." I clutched my T-shirt to my chest and smiled at him. " And yes, I am on the same date you are on." " I thought so," he said. " I mean, I don't think you can feel like this when it's not reciprocal." He left at 2:00 A.M. and called me at 11:00 the next morning to schedule our second date. "
19 " The eyes were large and gray and in a certain light looked soft, gentle, and even innocent. Then the light would change, the innocence would vanish, and the eyes looked like year-old ice. "
― Ross Thomas , Briarpatch
20 " The eyes were larger and gray and in a certain light looked soft, gentle, and even innocent. Then the light would change, the innocence would vanish, and the eyes looked like year-old ice. "
