#innocence

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d ↗

— Alexander Pope

#mind

Victims suggest innocence. And innocence, by the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms, suggests guilt. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#guilt #inexorable #innocence #logic #suggest

Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime. ↗

— Maximilien Robespierre

#attempts #butchers #crime #innocence #might

People say you're born innocent, but it's not true. You inherit all kinds of things that you can do nothing about. You inherit your identity, your history, like a birthmark that you can't wash off. ... We are born with our heads turned back, but my mother says we have to face into the future now. You have to earn your own innocence, she says. You have to grow up and become innocent. ↗

— Hugo Hamilton

#future #growing-up #growth #heritage #history

My child, I know you're not a child But I still see you running wild Between those flowering trees. Your sparkling dreams, your silver laugh Your wishes to the stars above Are just my memories. And in your eyes the ocean And in your eyes the sea The waters frozen over With your longing to be free. Yesterday you'd awoken To a world incredibly old. This is the age you are broken Or turned into gold. You had to kill this child, I know. To break the arrows and the bow To shed your skin and change. The trees are flowering no more There's blood upon the tiles floor This place is dark and strange. I see you standing in the storm Holding the curse of youth Each of you with your story Each of you with your truth. Some words will never be spoken Some stories will never be told. This is the age you are broken Or turned into gold. I didn't say the world was good. I hoped by now you understood Why I could never lie. I didn't promise you a thing. Don't ask my wintervoice for spring Just spread your wings and fly. Though in the hidden garden Down by the green green lane The plant of love grows next to The tree of hate and pain. So take my tears as a token. They'll keep you warm in the cold. This is the age you are broken Or turned into gold. You've lived too long among us To leave without a trace You've lived too short to understand A thing about this place. Some of you just sit there smoking And some are already sold. This is the age you are broken Or turned into gold. This is the age you are broken or turned into gold. ↗

— Antonia Michaelis

#growing-up #innocence #poem #youth #age

We're children. We're supposed to be childish. ↗

— George R.R. Martin

#innocence #myrcella #myrcella-baratheon #childhood

I just feel like every kid is growing up too fast and they're seeing too much. Everything is about sex, and that's fine for me. I'm not saying I don't like it. But I don't think it should be everywhere, where kids are exposed to everything sexual. Because they have to have some innocence; there's just no innocence left. ↗

— Ellen DeGeneres

#because #every #everything #everywhere #exposed

The decision of such judges as Claudius and his Senate is worth very little in the question of a man's innocence or guilt; but the sentence was that Seneca should be banished to the island of Corsica. ↗

— Frederic William Farrar

#claudius #decision #guilt #his #innocence

Art is the fatal net which catches these strange moments on the wing like mysterious butterflies, fleeing the innocence and distraction of common men. ↗

— Giorgio de Chirico

#butterflies #catches #common #distraction #fatal

American movies and music deliver themes of freedom, innocence, and power that appeal to others - partly because America itself was put together out of a multiplicity of national traditions. ↗

— Todd Gitlin

#american #american movies #appeal #because #deliver