#innocence

He bent and laid his lips on her hands, which were cold and lifeless. She drew them away, and he turned to the door, found his coat and hat under the faint gas-light of the hall, and plunged out into the winter night bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate. ↗

— Edith Wharton

#age

Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#innocence #useful-idiots #age

Voll Blüten steht der Pfirsichbaum nicht jede wächst zur Frucht sie schimmern hell wie Rosenschaum durch Blau und Wolkenflucht. Wie Blüten geh'n Gedanken auf hundert an jedem Tag -- lass' blühen, lass' dem Ding den Lauf frag' nicht nach dem Ertrag! Es muss auch Spiel und Unschuld sein und Blütenüberfluss sonst wär' die Welt uns viel zu klein und Leben kein Genuss. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#beauty #blossoms #enjoyment #growth #ideas

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

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

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

— William Blake

#innocence #pity #william-blake #experience

I just wanted things to be simple. I didn't understand why things had to be so complicated for all the grown ups. And I decided that if growing up meant things got confusing, then I would stay little forever. I would stay simple. But unfortunately everything around me did its best not to be. The world liked to be complex. It liked to twist, to distort. To bleed you dry of whatever feeling you could muster while still letting you hold on to your sanity so that you could experience heartache at its prime. I didn't know how cold the world could be when I was eleven. If I would have known...maybe I would have packed a sweater. ↗

— A.L. Collins

#innocence #youth #experience

I look at the world and through these innocent eyes, all I see is hatred and anger. Corrupting everything, ruining everything, but not preserving anything. What I should be seeing is respect, acceptance and love. But, if that was what these innocent eyes witnessed, they would be seeing and observing a lie. The people in this world are not respectful, theres barely any acceptance in this day and age, and love is an almost silent whisper, slowly fading. These innocent eyes, are now corrupted. No longer innocent as they should be. ↗

— Kitauna Roberts

#life #world #age

I never, even for a moment, doubted what they’d told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can, unwittingly, be cruel: they cannot imagine doubt’s complete absence. They have forgotten. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#doubt #innocence #parents #imagination

and yet a child’s utter innocence is but its blank ignorance, and the innocence more or less wanes as intelligence waxes. ↗

— Herman Melville

#herman-melville #innocence #intelligence #sailor #intelligence