#Innocence Quotes

“And too soon Marred are those so early Made.”

“And in the morn and liquid dew of youth,Contagious blastments are are most imminent.”

“The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails.”

“As chaste as unsunned snow.”

“The trust I have is in mine innocence, and therefore am I bold and resolute.”

“Love is too young to know what conscience is.”

“Infancy conforms to nobody;all conform to it.”

“To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child.”

“I doubt not then but innocence shall makeFalse accusation blush, and tyrannyTremble at patience.”

“As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown.”

“One of the most responsible things you can do as an adult is to become more of a child.”

“When the boys come into my yard for leave to gather horse-chestnuts, I own I enter into nature's game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, fearing that any moment they will find out the imposture of that showy chaff. But this tenderness is quite unnecessary; the enchantments are laid on very thick. Their young life is thatched with them. Bare and grim to tears is the lot of the children in the hovel I saw yesterday; yet not the less they hang it round with frippery romance, like the children of the happiest fortune.”

“I am a man more sinned against than sinning”

“Children are all foreigners.”

“Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.”

“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.”

“I see a schoolboy when I think of him,With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window.”

“The only enemy of innocence and beauty is time.”

“Give to these children, new from the world,Rest far from men.Is anything better, anything better?Tell us it then.”

“Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”

“A man is not to aim at innocence, any more than he is to aim at hair, but he is to keep it.”

“The spring without a leaf to toss, bare and bright like a virgin fierce in her chastity, scornful in her purity, was laid out on fields wide-eyed and watchful and entirely careless of what was done or thought by the beholders.”

“I love a dog. He does nothing for political reasons.”

“I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young / And weep because I know all things now.”

“The Land of Faery, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.”

“Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree. In a field by the river my love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.”

“The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.”

“That great Cathedral space which was childhood.”

“Oh, but she never wanted James to grow a day older or Cam either. These two she would have liked to keep for ever just as the way they were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into long-legged monsters.”

“At that moment of love, a moment when passion is absolutely silent under omnipotence of ecstasy, Marius, pure seraphic Marius, would have been more capable of visiting a woman of the streets than of raising Cosette’s dress above the ankle. Once on a moonlit night, Cosette stopped to pick up something from the ground, her dress loosened and revealed the swelling of her breasts. Marius averted his eyes.”

“The eye of a man should be still more reverent before the rising of a young maiden than before the rising of a star. The possibility of touch should increase respect. The down of the peach, the dust of the plum, the radiated crystal of snow, the butterfly’s wing powdered with feathers, are gross things beside that chastity that does not even know it is chaste. The young maiden is only the glimmer of a dream and is not yet statue. Her alcove is hidden in the shadows of the ideal. The indiscreet touch of the eye desecrates this dim penumbra. Here, to gaze, is to profane.”

“No one can keep a secret better than a child.”

“A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.”

“A great artist is a great man in a great child.”

“Over at our place, we’re sure of just one thing: everybody in the world was once a child. So in planning a new picture, we don’t think of grown-ups, and we don’t think of children. But just of that fine, clean, unspoiled spot down deep in every one of us, that maybe the world has made us forget.”

“No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child.”

“It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.”

“There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.”

“Too many people grow up. That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be 12 years old. They patronize, they treat children as inferiors. Well, I won't do that.”

“Marvelous are the innocent.”

“In my work I try to reach and speak to that innocence, showing it the fun and joy of living; showing it that laughter is healthy; showing it that the human species, although happily ridiculous at times, is still reaching for the stars.”

“The worst of us is not without innocence, although buried deeply it might be.”

“When she read just now to James, 'and there were numbers of soldiers with kettledrums and trumpets,' and his eyes darkened, she thought, why should they grow up, and lose all that?”

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

“She loved with so much passion as she loved with ignorance. She did not know whether it were good or evil, beneficent or dangerous, necessary or accidental, eternal or transitory, permitted or prohibited: she loved.”

“Children at once accept joy and happiness with quick familiarity, being themselves naturally all happiness and joy.”

“The Nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature.”

“If you're not dark inside and you come to this world, it'l turn you dark... and if you really have Sunshine inside you, it's not good to play in the dark. It's just gonna extinguish your fire.”

“We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.”

“When we fall in love and we have a first kiss with someone, we never ever imagine that someday that could be a last kiss.”