#innocence

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 and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don't care that we don't. ↗

— Dylan Thomas

#earthy #hope #innocence #love #optimism

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

#expectation #innocence #sadness #war #change

What sets one Southern town apart from another, or from a Northern town or hamlet, or city high-rise? The answer must be the experience shared between the unknowing majority (it) and the knowing minority (you). All of childhood's unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. Heroes and bogey men, values and dislikes, are first encountered and labeled in that early environment. In later years they change faces, places and maybe races, tactics, intensities and goals, but beneath those penetrable masks they wear forever the stocking-capped faces of childhood. ↗

— Maya Angelou

#i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings #innocence #learning #maya-angelou #change

When I saw him look at me with lust, I dropped my eyes but, in glancing away from him, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. And I saw myself, suddenly, as he saw me, my pale face, the way the muscles in my neck stuck out like thin wire. I saw how much that cruel necklace became me. And, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away. ↗

— Angela Carter

#lust #life

Isn't life,' she stammered, 'isn't life--' But what life was she couldn't explain. No matter. He quite understood. 'Isn't it, darling?' said Laurie. ↗

— Katherine Mansfield

#innocence #life #death

Ako nisam kriv, onda su pogriješili, zatvorili su nedužna čovjeka. Ako me puste, priznaće svoju grešku, a to nije ni lako ni korisno. Niko pametan ne može od njih tražiti da rade protiv sebe. Zahtjev bi bio nestvaran, i smiješan. Onda ja moram biti kriv. A kako da me puste ako sam kriv? Razumiješ li? Ne treba da budemo suviše nepravedni. Svako polazi sa svoga stanovišta i smatramo da je u redu kad tako mi činimo, ali kad to oni čine, onda nam smeta. Priznaćeš da je to nedosljedno. ↗

— Meša Selimović

#innocence #prison #prisoners #trial #death

Habit is necessary. It is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive ... one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in the big things, and happy in small ways. ↗

— Edith Wharton

#age

The world’s crawling with stupid, innocent girls, and I’m just one of them, self-consciously chasing after dreams that will never come true. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#dreaming #innocence #naivete #dreams

He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activites in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all. ↗

— Cormac McCarthy

#growing-up #innocence #life #loss-of-innocence #truths

Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door. ↗

— William Blake

#innocence #pity #william-blake #experience