It’s innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn’t.

Children have a different convention of the fearful until they have been taught the proper things to be shocked at.

Cosette, by learning that she was beautiful, lost the grace of not knowing it; an exquisite grace, for beauty heightened by artlessness is ineffable, and nothing is so adorable as dazzling innocence, going on her...

Unschuld ist kein Schutz.

You were born a child of light’s wonderful secret— you return to the beauty you have always been.

The hopeless hope is one of the early harbingers of spring, bespeaking an innocent belief that the world might right its wrongs and reverse its curses simply because the trees are coming into leaf.

Don’t care what people sayJust follow your own wayDon’t give up and use the chanceTo return to innocence.That’s not the beginning of the endThat’s the return to yourselfThe return to innocence.

I was so happy that my mother, father, and two brothers had somehow found one another. Perhaps my mother and father have gotten back together, I thought.

…it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of...

I know we’re not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads...

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

Dalgliesh was too experienced to assume that fear implied guilt; it was often the most innocent who were the most terrified.

Innocence ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, you know. Innocent little kids rip the wings off flies, because they don’t know any better. That’s innocence.

We try to bring up our children so that they are protected from the world’s evils, only to find we’ve raised a pack of innocents who seem to be about to stumble into them at...

And the sun on the wall of her room, the block of sun with all the tiny flying things in it. When she was little she thought they were the souls of dead insects, still...

People, in general, tend to project onto others their own state of mind. Well-meaning people inevitably assume other people are well meaning. People who cheat assume everyone cheats. People who deceive assume everybody deceives.Confessions of...

We shoot our heroes and enjoy peripeteia as a spectacle akin to sport and perhaps harshly disavowing the past protects us from the disappointment of our outsized hopes–who knows, really, but shifts in taste don’t...

I have been wrongly accused; and you, ma’am, and everybody else, will now think me wicked.””We shall think you what you prove yourself to be, my child. Continue to act as a good girl, and...

I still remember my middle school locker combination. Maybe I should go back to my old locker to see if I left my innocence in there.

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

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than action; innocence rather than Nobleness;...

It takes a very long time to become young.

It is only in the peach innocence of youth that life is at its crest on top of the wheel. And there being only life, the young cling to it, they fear death… And they...

Wir lernen aus unserer eigenen Geschichte, wozu der Mensch fähig ist. Deshalb dürfen wir uns nicht einbilden, wir seien nun als Menschen anders und besser geworden. Es gibt keine endgültig errungene moralische Vollkommenheit – für...

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...

Smile on the face or innocence on the face is as attractive as beauty on the face.

Sometimes, I miss so much the person that I was before the world tore me up in so many places. If only “they” could have just let me stay that way.

I know. And you hate Fang looking at those girls. But we’re still havingfun, and Fang still loves you, and you’ll still save the world. Okay?

Who has believed in the world and died with its name on his lips?

If Innocent is happy, it is because he is innocent. If he can defy the conventions, it is just because he can keep the commandments. It is just because he does not want to kill...

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.

When Aziza first spotted Mariam in the morning, her eyes always sprang open, and she began mewling and squirming in her mother’s grip. She thrust her arms toward Mariam, demanding to be held, her tiny...

I see you kneeling in church—stained only by colored windows

Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world, than I when I was a child.

…[I]t is pain to think of innocence in ruin.

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.

People who have woken up now to some harsh reality of life may often hide their ignorance by innocently saying that it’s a new trend without realizing the fact of its existence since ancient times.

Parker looked distressed. He had confidence in Wimsey’s judgment, and, in spite of his own interior certainty, he felt shaken.”My dear man, where’s the flaw in [this case]?””There isn’t one … There’s nothing wrong about...

My client is entitled to a presumption of innocence at this point.

Our true nature is one of innocence and freedom to choose how we live. We need to be brave enough not to give that away. Don’t give up on your right to, and sense of,...

Nos-tal-gic,’ Akira said, as though it were a word he had been struggling to find. Then he said a word in Japanese, perhaps the Japanese for ‘nostalgic.’ ‘Nos-tal-gic. It is good to be nos-tal-gic. Very...

Abuse manipulates and twists a child’s natural sense of trust and love. Her innocent feelings are belittled or mocked and she learns to ignore her feelings. She can’t afford to feel the full range of...

No mi kršćani upućeni smo po središtu našega Creda – ‘mučen pod Poncijem Pilatom’ – u povijest u kojoj je bilo razapinjanja i mučenja, u kojoj se plakalo i tako rijetko ljubilo. I nikakav od...

Partly James was jealous because he was a virgin, but mostly it just felt really weird being in a room with two people who’d spent the night having sex. It reminded him of the feeling...

O how can wicked men seem so steady and untouched with such black hearts, while poor innocents stand like malefactors before them!

Our petition is not based on innocence. Our petition is based upon rehabilitation of Stanley personally, but it is at least as importantly based on the value of Stanley Williams to the at-risk children in...

How great inexperience and innocence is. On the authority of their parents they go to a place where they could meet their death; for the Zirder in flood is very dangerous and, given the ignorance...

But later I threw away my foolish innocence to protect myself. And then I taught my daughter, your mother, to shed her innocence so she would not be hurt as well.

If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.