#innocence

Sometimes I ask God what I did to deserve her love. I maintain my innocence, and of all the forms of God’s wrath from plagues, pestilence, and famine, her love is by far the cruelest.
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— Jarod Kintz

#famine #god #innocence #love #pestilence

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

— Samuel Richardson

#evil-people #innocence #men

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 adult was essentially a broken-down child. ↗

— Piers Anthony

#innocence #suffering #nature

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. ↗

— W.B. Yeats

#poems #poetry #resignation #innocence

A library is a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity. ↗

— Germaine Greer

#libraries #reading #sexuality #virginity #innocence

My parents had torn through my innocence and left me with a tar-like substance that was corrupting what was left of me. I could feel it at night; slithering and curling around my soul as it slowly devoured me. It was draining my energy and replacing it with an evil I was afraid to confront. ↗

— J.D. Stroube

#devour #energy #horror #innocence #paranormal-ya

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

This was when he first suspected that the kindly child-loving God extolled by his headmistress might not exist. As it turned out, most major world events suggested the same. But for Theo’s sincerely godless generation, the question hasn’t come up. No one in his bright, plate-glass, forward-looking school ever asked him to pray, or sing an impenetrable cheery hymn. There’s no entity for him to doubt. His initiation, in front of the TV, before the dissolving towers, was intense but he adapted quickly. These days he scans the papers for fresh developments the way he might a listings magazine. As long as there’s nothing new, his mind is free. International terror, security cordons, preparations for war — these represent the steady state, the weather. Emerging into adult consciousness, this is the world he finds. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#innocence #terror #war #love

Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popular. ↗

— Maximilien Robespierre

#aristocratic #atheism #being #crime #great

I think there's an innocence to me. ↗

— Krista Allen

#i think #innocence #me #think