#innocence

the cold winds of insecurity... hadn't shredded the dreamy chrysalis of his childhood. He was still immersed in the dim, wet wonder of the folded wings that might open if someone loved him; he still hoped, probably, in a butterfly's unthinking way, for spring and warmth. How the wings ache, folded so, waiting; that is, they ache until they atrophy. ↗

— Harold Brodkey

#innocence #love

Innocence eroded into nightmare. All because of very bad touch. Love, corrupted. ↗

— Ellen Hopkins

#ellen-hopkins #fallout #innocence #love #love

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 but to excite to life that a pistol is still as exciting to him as it is to a schoolboy. It is just because he does not want to steal, because he does not covet his neighbour's goods, that he has captured the trick (oh, how we all long for it!), the trick of coveting his own goods. It is just because he does not want to commit adultery that he achieves the romance of sex; it is just because he loves one wife that he has a hundred honeymoons. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#innocence #life

The innocence that feels no risk and is taught no caution, is more vulnerable than guilt, and oftener assailed. ↗

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

#caution #feels #guilt #innocence #more

Power is something of which I am convinced there is no innocence this side of the womb. ↗

— Nadine Gordimer

#convinced #i #i am #innocence #power

I started writing books for children because I could illustrate them myself and because, in my innocence, I thought they'd be easier. ↗

— Mark Haddon

#books #children #could #easier #i

Do you know anything that in all its innocence is more humiliating than the funny pages of a Sunday newspaper in America? ↗

— Johan Huizinga

#anything #do you know #funny #humiliating #innocence

That's the beautiful thing about innocence; even monsters have a pocketful of childhood memories with which to seek comfort with. ↗

— Dave Matthes

#book #childhood #comfort #death #drums

People are entitled to the presumption of innocence. ↗

— Barney Frank

#innocence #people #presumption

Unlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence. ↗

— Lewis H. Lapham

#business #illusion #innocence #must #other