c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I do not like think of them as dead, just alive in another time, they are alive in that time just as we are in this time."- Rose
— J. Yates, Paradox Child
As we travel to new places we gain new perspectives and renew our thinking.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
When you stop chasing the wrong things, you give the right ones a fighting chance- Victoria Barron- dedicated attorney and protagonist of Misplaced
— SL Hulen, Misplaced
In reality, time doesn't pass; we pass. Time itself is invariant. It just is. Therefore, past and future aren't separate locations, the way New York and Paris are separate locations. And since the past isn't a location, you can't travel to it.
— Michael Crichton, Timeline
In the Vortex that lies beyond time and space tumbled a police box that was not a police box.
— Stephen Baxter, Doctor Who - The Wheel of Ice
Solutions sometimes present themselves after a reset.
— Les Lynam, ...Before You Leap
All the best days start with a latte and a time trip.
— P.K. Hrezo, Butterman (Time) Travel, Inc.
Among the many who fruitlessly attempted thoughout history to create a time machine, one individual actually succeeded. He was surprisingly not a human.
— Benson Grayson, Strange Science Fiction and Fantasy Omnibus
I have no hankerin’ for thrills if needs be sought in the heavens. I shall keep my feet firmly planted in contentment.
— Quoleena Sbrocca, The Crossing Hour
This was a true pants-pooping moment.
— Dinah Katt, Once Upon a Time Travel
She looked mean, but I think that was her natural resting face.
— Dinah Katt, Once Upon a Time Travel
I mean, were you born a freak?” I asked. I flinched at my own words. I didn’t mean to be rude it just came out that way. The girl rolled her eyes to me. “I don’t know. Were you born stupid?” Okay, maybe I deserved that. “Yeah, probably.
— Dinah Katt, Once Upon a Time Travel
I had read once that dumb people didn't know they were dumb. They thought they were just as smart as anybody else. That was a very unsettling thought. What if I was really dumb and didn't know it?
— Dinah Katt, Once Upon a Time Travel
He didn't mean I couldn't leave, he meant I couldn't leave leave. If he meant I couldn't even take out the trash and had to stay inside all the time, that would result in a vitamin D deficiency and I would get scurvy and turn pale, wither, and die and he would go to jail for child abuse. So, I don't think he meant that.
— Dinah Katt, Once Upon a Time Travel
Strike two. Add dumb as a box of rocks to the list of why I don't like these guys. I got to my feet, deciding to play nice. After all, they were just poor dumb guys who couldn't help it that there weren't enough brains in their genes.
— Dinah Katt, Once Upon a Time Travel
Do not go where you don’t belong. I scoffed. That sounded like an invitation if I ever heard one.
— Dinah Katt, Once Upon a Time Travel
What happened next… well, I'm going to blame it on the fact that I was scared. And I had just flown or fallen or something through about eighty years worth of Time. Or maybe it was the beans. I farted. I farted loud enough that it echoed around the small closet, bounced off all four walls and finally escaped through the open door. At least that's what it did in my mind's eye.
— Dinah Katt, Once Upon a Time Travel
A stealthy ninja monkey she was not.
— Dinah Katt, Once Upon a Time Travel
That was when things got weird. You may have thought things were weird already, but this was uber-weird
— Dinah Katt, Once Upon a Time Travel
My final thought, before falling into the golden haze of time travel, was that these adventures on medieval Óshéanús had been the greatest days of any of my lives, past or future.
— Michael Oehley
Jack glanced toward the dressing room, not believing that all the time he had been with her, she had been half-naked...
— Terry Spear, A Ghost of a Chance at Love
The sun was already long past the spire when Garrick purchased a mug of coffee from his regular man on the tip of Oxford Street. But his palate had been educated by 21st century coffee, and he judged this mug as bilge water not fit for the Irish.
— Eoin Colfer, The Reluctant Assassin
sometimes music isn't just a bunch of sounds and lyrics, sometimes it's more than that: a time machine...
— Alina Radoi
Every possible thing that can happen or will happen has already happened somewhere. (Year 2036 John Titor)
— John Titor Foundation, John Titor A Time Traveler's Tale
The past is obdurate.― Stephen King, 11/22/63
— Kit Cole, Justice for all Time: a time travel romance
I am married but I've yet to meet my wife, and she is dead. Such is the life of a time-traveler... complicated, that is.
— M.K. Alexander
Ach, lass. Nae matter what happens, I will find you. Even if I must travel through time to a thousand different places, I promise you, I will find you.
— Dawn Marie Hamilton, Just Beyond the Garden Gate
First of all, time travel per se does not exist. ‘Travel’ implies that you choose both your destination and when you come back. It’s more a ‘time shot,’ a ‘time through.’ But it’s definitely not time travel.
— Francis Barel, Saving Kennedy
In 1945, Oppenheimer posited that what happened during the Trinity Test was due to ‘Time Tunnels.’ A 50-year ‘time tunnel.”“So, in 1945, you could send a soldier 50 years back?”“Exactly. Well, except for the fact that at the time we didn’t know if we ever could deliberately send something or someone, but we were already sure it was a one-way trip.
— Francis Barel, Saving Kennedy
Taking Morgana with it, the lightning arced back through the clouds; leaving behind nothing but the last echoing remains of her scream.
— Sam Whitehouse, The Prophecy of Three: The Keys of Time
I suppose that someday, suddenly, I will be transferred to another age, for example the chivalric or the bronze. The hope is, of course, that I arrive in period dress but not resemble a contemporary luminary, for I wish to simply onlook. But, more probably, thanks to chronologically garbled garb, or my mistakable face—which will lead to expectations of competence—I will have to explain my occurrence. That explained, I will have to explain my age, The Present, also known as "The Future" in the past. This is why I am studying our great inventions and advances: to be ready for questions.
— Amy Leach, Things That Are
Time isn’t a line or a circle or any 2-D object, Aisling had written. It’s more like you’re standing inside of a sphere of constantly flowing energy. When you find that center, you can reach out and touch any part of your life.
— Erica Cameron, Doorways to Extra Time
It may interest for you to know that most Canadians in 2036 are some of the most efficient, ruthless and dangerous people I know. God help Quebec.
— John Titor Foundation, John Titor A Time Traveler's Tale
I loved you backward and forward in time. I loved you beyond boundaries of time and space.
— Dan Simmons, Endymion
Have you ever heard of the theory of relativity?"Artemis blinked. "Is this a joke? I have traveled through time, Doctor. I think I know a little something about relativity.
— Eoin Colfer, The Last Guardian
History doesn't repeat itself, but it harmonizes, and what it usually makes is the devil's music.
— Stephen King, 11/22/63
Running along the bank was a white rabbit wearing a waistcoat and looking worriedly at a clock. Appearing and disappearing at various points on both banks was a dark blue British police telephone booth, out of which a perplexed-looking man holding a screwdriver would periodically emerge. A group of dwarf bandits could be seen disappearing into a hole in the sky. "Time travelers," said Nobodaddy in a voice of gentle disgust. "They're everywhere these days.
— Salman Rushdie, Luka and the Fire of Life
Time travel is a terrifying weapon, far more powerful than anything ever before conceived,' he said grimly.'Mankind just isn't ready for that kind of knowledge. We're like children casually playing with an atom bomb.
— Alex Scarrow, TimeRiders
You're just not thinking fourth dimensionally.
— Doc Brown Back to the Future III
Time travel is awesome....And useful. That sentence had a typo when I typed it...The first time.
— Craig Benzine
I just hope we don’t cause a major paradox.
— Michelle Madow, Timeless
Do what you know needs to be done.
— Lynda A. Calder, The Enigma Diaries: Hidden History
If I had a wish it would be this: that Google maps could take me, not to just anywhere on the planet, but to anywhere in time.
— Janet Turpin Myers, Nightswimming
Are you saying that we can affect what happened in the past? That we can change it?
— Michelle Madow, Timeless
All the various time travel devices used by Verne and Bert were stored in the repository, Poe explained, including the ones that had never quite worked as they were meant to. There was one that resembled a blue police box from London—“Stolen by a doctor with delusions of grandeur,” said Poe—one that was simply a large, transparent sphere—“Created by a scientist with green skin and too much ego,” said Verne—and one that was rather ordinary by comparison.“This one looks like an automobile,” John said admiringly, “with wings.”“The doors open that way for a reason,” Verne explained, “we just never figured out what it was. The inventor of this particular model tried integrating his designs into a car, an airplane, and even a steam engine train. He was running a crackpot laboratory in the Arizona desert, and he never realized that it was not his inventions themselves, but his proximity to some sort of temporal fluctuation in the local topography, that allowed them to work.” “What happened to him?” asked Jack.“He’d get the machines up to one hundred and six miles per hour,” said Bert, “and then he’d run out of fuel and promptly get arrested by whatever constabulary had been chasing him. The sad part was that Jules figured out if he’d just gone two miles an hour faster, he’d likely have been successful in his attempt.
— James A. Owen, The Dragon's Apprentice
Psychiatrist and Auschwitz survivor, Viktor Frankl, stated, "...man is by no means merely a product of heredity and environment. There is a third element: decision. Man ultimately decides for himself!
— Alice A.  Kemp, The Dragons of Atlantis
It took a long moment, but Gerard finally raised his head and looked Jon in the eye. “It meant that I have not been honest with you, Jon Calder, and if you are to understand the danger you are in now, I must tell you everything, no matter if you believe me or not.
— Hank  Edwards, Destiny's Bastard
Because it's all about the journey...
— Selena Fulton
I was in '78 recently," he announced. "I brought you this."He handed me a single by the Beatles. I didn't recognize the title."Didn't they split in '70?""Not always. How are things?
— Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair
If one can travel through time, fate needn't be absolute.
— Robert Appleton, Prehistoric Clock
Working with heart, then enjoy our time.
— Marya Sy
When you have clarity and commit to manifesting your heart’s desire, you will be drawn to those who light you up on every level…and they will be drawn to you.
— Annette Vaillancourt, How to Manifest Your Soulmate with Eft: Relationship as a Spiritual Path
Nurture your relationships and all good things will come to you.
— Malti Bhojwani
Think big or die small!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
— Stephen Richards
How many books on manifesting will you buy before your realize that all you have manifested is a bunch of useless books? Do more than just wish
—  CREATE! Do more than just want
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, Eloisa to Abelard
The most sophisticated people I know - inside they are all children. 
— Jim Henson
They've done it before and they'll do it again and when they do it -- seems that only the children weep. Good night.
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
There is an innocence in admiration: it occurs in one who has not yet realized that they might one day be admired.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.
— Joan Didion, On Self-Respect
And that's what innocence is. It's simple and trusting like a child, not judgmental and committed to one narrow point of view. If you are locked into a pattern of thinking and responding, your creativity gets blocked. You miss the freshness and magic of the moment. Learn to be innocent again, and that freshness never fades.
— Michael  Jackson
But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody'd written 'fuck you' on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them— all cockeyed naturally— what it meant, and how they'd all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever'd written it.
— J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
The others cast themselves down upon the fragrant grass, but Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured for ever. He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful. In winter here no heart could mourn for summer or for spring. No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lórien, there was no stain.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
No one loses their innocence. It is either taken or given away willingly.
— Tiffany Madison, Black and White
There is no aphrodisiac like innocence
— Jean Baudrillard
I'm not...' Angharad began, but then she thought. Not what? Not a bad person? Perhaps. But had she never known anger? Never held unkind thoughts? The stranger's observation was valid. No one was innocent of darkness.
— Charles de Lint, Into the Green
You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her.
— Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin
That was my first instinct -- to protect him. It never occurred to me that there was a greater need to protect myself. Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.
— Graham Greene, The Quiet American
Love wasn't to be measured, much less restricted, by methodology. Love wasn't a method. Love was a faculty of the highest order, imagined or unimagined. Love wasn't an activity. Love was an experience. Love was the second coming of innocence.
— Rob Inclan, The Love Between Us
In any case, you must remember, my dearest, that the main strength of innocence is innocence itself. farewell.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.
— Ouida, Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida
The truth is, not one of is innocent. We all have sins to confess.
— C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici
I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun warmed, flower bordered path.
— André Gide
Soul of a victim tends to prove her innocence.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
I want to get out of here means I want to be innocent.
— Kathy Acker, My Mother: Demonology
How could he maintain the apology in his eyes without getting carried away by her cherubic innocence?
— Faraaz Kazi
We speak of love when we destroy nature.It sounds like innocence of cruel arrogance.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
You either keep your childhood innocence or you rot!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Scout- .. Uncle Jack?"Uncle Jack- "Ma'am?"Scout- "What's a whore-lady?
— Harper Lee
Why do we have this desire to tease the innocent? Is it envy?
— Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
Those who will never be fooled can never be delighted, because without self-forgetfulness there can be no delight, and this is a great and grievous loss.
— Alan Jacobs, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis
MCMXIVThose long uneven linesStanding as patientlyAs if they were stretched outsideThe Oval or Villa Park,The crowns of hats, the sunOn moustached archaic facesGrinning as if it were allAn August Bank Holiday lark;And the shut shops, the bleachedEstablished names on the sunblinds,The farthings and sovereigns,And dark-clothed children at playCalled after kings and queens,The tin advertisementsFor cocoa and twist, and the pubsWide open all day--And the countryside not caring:The place names all hazed overWith flowering grasses, and fieldsShadowing Domesday linesUnder wheat's restless silence;The differently-dressed servantsWith tiny rooms in huge houses,The dust behind limousines;Never such innocence,Never before or since,As changed itself to pastWithout a word--the menLeaving the gardens tidy,The thousands of marriages,Lasting a little while longer:Never such innocence again.
— Philip Larkin
I was very lighthearted. This often the way when the abandonment of personal responsibility is enforced: neither wronged innocence or just guilt can seriously impair the sensation of freedom one has.
— Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers
There are many more layers to innocence than one might ever imagine, and we are ever unaware of them until each barrier is breached.
— Paula Reed, Hester: The Missing Years of the The Scarlet Letter
In Paris, Julien’s position with regard to Madame de Renal would very soon have been simplified; but in Paris love is the child of the novels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would have found in three or four novels, and even in the lyrics of the Gymnase, a clear statement of their situation. The novels would have outlined for them the part to be played, shown them the model to copy; and this model, sooner or later, albeit without the slightest pleasure, and perhaps with reluctance, vanity would have compelled Julien to follow.In a small town of the Aveyron or the Pyrenees, the slightest incident would have been made decisive by the ardour of the climate. Beneath our more sombre skies, a penniless young man, who is ambitious only because the refinement of his nature puts him in need of some of those pleasures which money provides, is in daily contact with a woman of thirty who is sincerely virtuous, occupied with her children, and never looks to novels for examples of conduct. Everything goes slowly, everything happens by degrees in the provinces: life is more natural.
— Stendhal, The Red and the Black
Innocence is what is precious about life. No other experience can compare. Cherish it.
— Brent M. Jones
i hugged myself as a child & told Myself that everything was perfect in the petrichor The smell of pure innocence & earthy & earthly Innocence that stays in the clothes I only wear on good days…
— Jay Sheets, The Hour Wasp
Monsieur, innocence is its own crown. Innocence has no truck with highness. It is as august in rags as it is draped in the fleur-de-lis.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
The solid earth sways like the treacherous sea beneath the feet of men and spirits alike when the innocent are slain in the name of law, and their wrongs are undone by slandering the pure of heart.
— George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan
In the depth of cold, warm magnetizing feelings,Listen to the sound of love in a happening hug,In deep connection of being human, in an innocent expression.
— Abhinav Rajput
How are babies made?" Visibly startled, Jordan turned and opened his mouth, as if he intended to speak, but for some reason no words came out. At first Alexandra was puzzled by his involuntary silence, but then understanding dawned. She shook her head and sighed with sympathy for their mutual plight. " You don't know either, do you?
— Judith McNaught, Something Wonderful
I think the only reason I never lost my mind is that I knew I was innocent. That wasn't a happy thought, so the dementors couldn't suck it out of me...but it kept me sane and knowing who I am...helped me keep my powers...
— J.K. Rowling
For such a worldly, surly bastard, Bas had always been incredibly innocent. Always seen the best in people.
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Born of Vengeance
So many lives are in bitterness today not just because of how their pasts were abused, but how they think they were innocent.
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, Religion, Philosophy and life
Do you know where you were on Thursday evening at about eight o'clock last week, and who you were with, and what you were doing? Are you absolutely certain beyond any shadow of a doubt? Would you bet your life on it? If there is any possibility—no matter how slim or remote—that you could possibly be mistaken about such a thing, you are the kind of person who should never agree to talk to the police under just about any circumstances for as long as you live. And that includes practically everybody.
— James Duane, You Have the Right to Remain Innocent
The main dry storage room of Sin du Jour is filled with a light unseen on Earth since a time of abject innocence.And that was long ago, indeed.
— Matt Wallace, Envy of Angels
The ship told you the guilty systems recognizes no innocents. I'd say it does. It recognizes the innocence... only to violate it.
— Ian M. Banks
Until that day at the dress department Lucie had been many things to me: a child, a source of comfort, a balm, an escape from myself; she was literally everything for me – but a woman. Our love in the physical sense of the word had proceeded no further than the kissing stage. And even the way she kissed was childish (I'd fallen in love with those kisses, long but chaste, with dry closed lips counting each other's fine striations as they touched in emotion).In short, until then I had felt tenderness for Lucie, but no sensual desire; I'd grown so accustomed to its absence that I wasn't even conscious of it; my relationship with Lucie seemed so beautiful that I could never have dreamed anything was missing. Everything fit so harmoniously together: Lucie, her monastically gray clothes, and my monastically chaste relation with her.
— Milan Kundera, The Joke
Yet I believe, as I say, that it was precisely this underhand act that gave birth to her vitriol, for people are at their least forgiving when they themselves have been underhand, as though they would exact their innocence from you at any price.
— Rachel Cusk, Outline
Her face lit up
—  illuminated by the enlightenment of recognition and the innocence of surprise.
His [Vyāsadeva's] son was a great devotee, an equibalanced monist, whose mind was always concentrated in monism. He was transcendental to mundane activities, but being unexposed, he appeared like an ignorant person.
— A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, Srimad-Bhagavatam: Bhagavata Purana
Innocence has a grace which intelligence lacks!
— Ramana Pemmaraju
Esteem for the army - never in this country regarded, in the continental manner, as a popular expression of the national will - implies a kind of innocence.
— Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time: 3rd Movement
(...) there are these fading, ageing girls who constantly let themselves go over the edge without resisting, strong girls, still unused in their innermost selves, who have never been loved. Perhaps, Lord, you mean me to leave everything and go love them. Otherwise why is it so difficult for me not to follow them when they pass me in the street? Why do I suddenly invent the sweetest, most nocturnal words, and why does my voice settle sweetly inside me between my throat and heart? Why do I imagine how I, with unutterable caution, would hold them to my breath, these dolls that life has been playing with, flinging their arms apart springtime after springtime for nothing, and again for nothing, until they became slack in the shoulders. They've never fallen from a very high hope, so they're not broken; but they're badly chipped already and too far gone. Only stray cats come to them in the evening in their rooms and keep giving them furtive scratches and then sleep on top of them. Sometimes I follow one of them down a couple of streets. They walk past the houses, people are continually coming along who blot them out, they go on fading until they are nothing.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
The true definition of innocence is unfiltered perception.
— R.A.Delmonico
I look upon the gift of my life as a wondrous journey.
— Maureen Brady, Daybreak: Meditations For Women Survivors Of Sexual Abuse
Innocence is the ability to see things for what they are.
— R.A.Delmonico
Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it all over again. The matron doesn't want to repeat her girlhood - she wants to repeat her honeymoon. I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
Innocence must die young if it isn't to kill the souls of men
— Graham Greene
The innocent must not suffer.
— Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None
We would be a few years younger,if every day we meditated for five minutes on the meanings of the word innocence.
— Alexandra Vasiliu, The King of Time: An Illustrated Fairy Tale
Out of the mouths of babes comes only bubbles. Out of the mouths of men like me, only babble.
— Warren Eyster, The Goblins of Eros
Isaiah grabs my hand and leads me away from the police...My heart stutters. He's holding my hand. A guy is holding my hand. Touching it. Like his fingers entwined with mine. I've never held a guy's hand before and it feels good. So good. Warm. Strong. Awesome. And it would only be a million times better if the guy holding my hand liked me.
— Katie McGarry, Crash into You
Her innocence was maddening. She should know. She should know what her steward had done. She should know it to be her fault whether she’d given the order or not–and whether she knew or not. Innocent? Her? Never.He did not want her to know. He did not want her to see. But:Look at me, he found himself thinking furiously at her. Look at me. She lifted her eyes, and did.
— Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Crime
And who isn’t less innocent than they lead us to believe? That’s one of the fundamental truths about human nature.
— Glenn Haybittle, The Way Back to Florence
Those who recognize their innocence do not expect, receive, or accept punishment from any outside source.
— Alan Cohen
She shrugged innocently at him and asked, “What I do?
— Jason Medina, A Ghost In New Orleans
Now it seemed unbelievable, the innocence of a girl in a fairy tale.
— Janet Fitch, Paint it Black
My eyes were drawn to him as if my world was black and white and he was a rainbow.
— L S May
We are all the same and need to think that we are innocent. However, we do blame others just to be innocent. We simply believe blaming will wash out ourselves. More we search innocence more we blame others. What we need to understand our purity instead of trying to prove that we are blameless.
— Umut Kisa
We shoot our heroes and enjoy peripeteia as a spectacle akin to sport and perhaps harshly disavowing the past protects us from the disappointment of our outsized hopes--who knows, really, but shifts in taste don't fully account for the phenomenon. At any rate, nearly everything urgent and alive becomes doo-wop down the road, at least in this country's pop culture, and along the way a somewhat self-hating irony lays waste not only to the work but to the desires it once carried. It's like we die into adulthood.
— Charles D'Ambrosio
This woman might have a daughter, but she was as innocent and pure as newly fallen snow.
— Gena Showalter, The One You Want
No one wanted to be responsible for telling the young and innocent Princess about the things a man and a woman could do together. No one wanted to take away my innocence. Well I was now 112 years old, I figured I was old enough to learn.
— Laura Greenwood, Awakening
...he looked as if nothing hard in the world had touched him...
— Dean Koontz
People get it wrong when they talk about innocence: they think it’s something to do with ignorance about the facts of sex and all the nasty things that happen in the world. But facts don’t change people: it’s understanding how the facts feel that does.
— Alexia Casale, The Bone Dragon
I don't know how to defend myself: surprised innocence cannot imagine being under suspicion.
— Pierre Corneille
Innocence is a better world.
— Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
When we lose our innocence - when we start feeling the weight of the atmosphere and learn that there's death in the pot - we take leave of our sense.
— Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Even if I could live forever,” she said to the baby, “I still don’t know which way I would teach you. I was once so free and innocent. I too laughed for no reason."“But later I threw away my foolish innocence to protect myself. And then I taught my daughter, your mother, to shed her innocence so she would not be hurt as well.
— Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
Monsieur, innocence is its own crown! Innocence has only to act to be noble! She is as august in rags as fleur de lys.
— Victor Hugo
Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
Hello," Life says, "Remember me?We started out together hereWhen you were just a bundleOf innocent amazement.Remember how you saw the worldWith nothing but wonder?We were such rowdy playmates then.We painted on the sky with cloudsAnd made magic out of Clothespins and peanut butter.Remember, can you, how I became stained and heavyWith trouble?Not safe now. Lots of no.They dressed me in painful clothesAnd made you wear them, too.You don't recognize me, do youBut I've never abandoned youOr lost my wild, happy desireTo show you Play with youKiss youHide and seek down twisty pathsAnd always discover more.Want to run away with me again?Shall we elope without ever leavingBecause that's possible, you know.I've never been anywhere but hereWaiting for youTo remember.
— Jacob Nordby
...I'm a fool. I expect too much, then I'm angry because nothing ever works out the way I want. When I was young and full of hopes and aspirations, I didn't know I would get hurt so often. I think I'll get tough and won't ache again, then my fragile shell shatters, and again, symbolically, my blood is spilled with the tears I shed. I pull myself back together again, go on, convince myself there is a reason for everything, and at some point in my life it will be disclosed. And when I have what I want, I hope to god it stays long enough to let me know I have it, and it wont hurt when it goes, for I don't expect it to stay, not now. I'm like a doughnut, always being punch out in the middle, and constantly I go around searching for the missing piece, and on and on it goes, never ending, only beginning...
— V.C. Andrews, Petals on the Wind
We'll never feel safe again, and so it's bye-bye innocence. It's been nice knowing you, but you're gone now.
— John Marsden, Tomorrow, When the War Began
Shocked?” Juliet queried, the light pink tint on her cheeks the only telling sign of her discomfort with the conversation.He nodded. “Yes. I had no idea my little girl knew what fluffies were.”Juliet opened her mouth to respond but was cut off by more misguided innocence from Kate. “They’re the fluffy things Juliet keeps hidden in her dress here and here,” she said proudly, tapping her chest to indicate just where these fluffy objects were located.Patrick blinked. “That’s quite enough, Katie love. Why don’t you go paint some flowers or something. I need to have a word alone with Juliet.
— Rose Gordon, Her Secondhand Groom
The flow of spiritual connectedness and oneness with life will dwell in you if your heart and mind is open and innocent.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
The hour of spring was dark at last,sensuous memories of sunlight past,I stood alone in garden bowersand asked the value of my hours.Time was spent or time was tossed,Life was loved and life was lost.I kissed the flesh of tender girls,I heard the songs of vernal birds.I gazed upon the blushing light,aware of day before the night.So let me ask and hear a thought:Did I live the spring I’d sought?It's true in joy, I walked along,took part in dance, and sang the song.and never tried to bind an hourto my borrowed garden bower;nor did I once entreata day to slumber at my feet.Yet days aren't lulled by lyric song,like morning birds they pass along,o'er crests of trees, to none belong;o'er crests of trees of drying dew,their larking flight, my hands, eschewThus I’ll say it once and true...From all that I saw, and everywhere I wandered,I learned that time cannot be spent,It only can be squandered.
— Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy
I wanted to tell her to never change, to never let her heart get trampled down and hard. But she’d remember that, too. And right now she didn’t know that there was any other way to be. That her heart, her soul, could ever be anything other than soft and lovely and fertile. And she needed to stay that way as long as she could.
— R.J. Keller, Waiting For Spring
There's something about seeing people when they have just wake up--before they have a chance to put on the face they show everyone else. There's like this last hint of innocence.
— Robin Brande, Fat Cat
Innocence expresses itself to a man so blind!
— Somya Kedia
In innocence everything has its truest meaning.
— Calvin W. Allison, Growing in the Presence of God
A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
A woman will always remain as princess as long as she keeps her childhood innocence and goodwill
—  a man will always remain as prince as long as he keeps his childhood innocence and goodwill!
Innocence is an infinitely fragile thing and thought can sometimes injure, even destroy it. - Pg. 254
— Ellis Peters, Dead Man's Ransom
...[I]t is pain to think of innocence in ruin.
— Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley
You loved people and you came to depend on their being there. but people died or changed or went away and it hurt too much. The only way to avoid that poin was not to love anyone, and not to let anyone get too close or too important. The secret of not being hurt like this again, I decided, was never depending on anyone, never needing, never loving.It is the last dream of children, to be forever untouched.
— Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
You can never hurt me,And you will never cause me painCause you're made of fire,And I'm the heavy rain.
— Ghaith Sal, Burning Innocence
The really pure in heart know nothing of what goes on around them each day, each night; never realize what poisonous weeds spring up beneath their childish feet.
— François Mauriac, Thérèse Desqueyroux
Church didn't answer that. Instead he said, "The darkness is all around us. Very few people have the courage to light a candle against it.""I'm not that kind of idea
— Jonathan Maberry, The King of Plagues
I love her with all my soul. Why, she is a child! She's a child now — a real child. Oh! you know nothing about it at all, I see.""And are you assured, at the same time, that you love Aglaya too?""Yes — yes — oh; yes!""How so? Do you want to make out that you love them BOTH?""Yes — yes — both! I do!""Excuse me, prince, but think what you are saying! Recollect yourself!""Without Aglaya — I — I MUST see Aglaya! — I shall die in my sleep very soon — I thought I was dying in my sleep last night. Oh! if Aglaya only knew all — I mean really, REALLY all! Because she must know ALL — that's the first condition towards understanding. Why cannot we ever know all about another, especially when that other has been guilty? But I don't know what I'm talking about — I'm so confused. You pained me so dreadfully. Surely — surely Aglaya has not the same expression now as she had at the moment when she ran away? Oh, yes! I am guilty and I know it — I know it! Probably I am in fault all round — I don't quite know how — but I am in fault, no doubt. There is something else, but I cannot explain it to you, Evgenie Pavlovitch. I have no words; but Aglaya will understand. I have always believed Aglaya will understand — I am assured she will.""No, prince, she will not. Aglaya loved like a woman, like a human being, not like an abstract spirit. Do you know what, my poor prince? The most probable explanation of the matter is that you never loved either the one or the other in reality.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
You know-- one loves the sunset, when one is so sad...""Were you so sad, then?" I asked, "on the day of the forty-four sunsets?"But the little prince made no reply.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Your window square a yellow kite, and the Moon a white balloon
— John Geddes
The hopeless hope is one of the early harbingers of spring, bespeaking an innocent belief that the world might right its wrongs and reverse its curses simply because the trees are coming into leaf.
— Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives
The dream of all men is to meet little sluts who are innocent but ready for all forms of depravity—which is what, more or less, all teenage girls are.
— Michel Houellebecq, The Possibility of an Island
In the middle of a wrist's suicide slash-line, below the layered skin and above the pulse, there's an acupuncture point that says, Get back to who you were meant to be. This is the heart spot, the center. Your whole life the skin on that place will stay closest to being a baby's skin, as close as you can get anymore to the way you started, the way you once thought you'd always be.
— Monica Drake, Clown Girl
and yet a child’s utter innocence is but its blank ignorance, and the innocence more or less wanes as intelligence waxes.
— Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor
She was fragile, gentle, wide awake in a sleeping world.
— Jeanette Winterson, Gut Symmetries
Things that are truly innocent don’t need to be labelled as such.
— Zoë Heller, What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal]
a fall from great innocence hurts the most to knowthat you are nowtainted
— Anastasia wild
There is no sanctity. This is the downfall of innocence.
— Nadège Richards, Asylum 54.0
Maybe innocence is a skin you must shed to build layers more resistant to the caustic truths of the world.
— Héctor Tobar, The Barbarian Nurseries
Innocence is defined in dictionaries as freedom from guilt or sin, especially from lack of knowledge; purity of heart; blamelessness; guilelessness; simplicity, etc.
— William Maxwell
I think I grew up that night. It might have been Patrick that lost his virginity, but it was me that lost my innocence. Laying in the dark,holding the guy I’d loved since I was twelve and being the friend, the rock he needed…without being corny or schmaltzy, I think I became a man.
— T.A. Webb, Let's Hear It for the Boy
You have been so sheltered, Deeta - more even than your sisters. You know nothing of life or of people, in truth I think both scare you. You have little experience of anything but Tom and I and the children. You carved out a little niche for yourself with us, somewhere you were comfortable and safe. With each passing day I have watched you close yourself off from all that is new until it becomes impossible to answer the question of who you are because you do not know yourself. I think you have courage and that you are resourceful, maybe you are brave. But at this moment I see you look at upheaval and adventure with fright in your soul, so that you see only the bad and no good at all.
— D.D. Chant, Broken City
Mr. Cope...' Povy began.Jem narrowed his eyes.'The lad has a remarkably innocent face.''Innocence is a time of life, not an irrevocable blot.
— Eloisa James, Duchess By Night
Westcliff thinks that St. Vincent is in love with you.”Evie choked a little and didn’t dare look up from her tea. “Wh-why does he think that?”“He’s known St. Vincent from childhood, and can read him fairly well. And Westcliff sees an odd sort of logic in why you would finally be the one to win St. Vincent’s heart. He says a girl like you would appeal to…hmm, how did he put it?…I can’t remember the exact words, but it was something like… you would appeal to St. Vincent’s deepest, most secret fantasy.” Evie felt her cheeks flushing while a skirmish of pain and hope took place in the tired confines of her chest. She tried to respond sardonically. “I should think his fantasy is to consort with as many women as possible.”A grin crossed Lillian’s lips. “Dear, that is not St. Vincent’s fantasy, it’s his reality. And you’re probably the first sweet, decent girl he’s ever had anything to do with.
— Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Winter
Adults havethe benefit of experience and know the trick will work as long as the technique is correct.When we “grow up” we gain this experience and knowledge, but we lose our innocence andsense of wonder. In other words, the price we pay for growing up is a permanent sense ofloss.
— Alberto Alvaro Ríos, The Iguana Killer: Twelve Stories Of The Heart
It is difficult to frighten those who are easily astonished; ignorance causes fearlessness. Children have so little claim on hell, that if they should see it they would admire it.
— Victor Hugo, Ninety-Three
Innocence is thought charming because it offers delightful possibilities for exploitation.
— Mason Cooley
There are times where excessive innocence seems so monstrous that it becomes hateful.
— Gaston Leroux
The flowered trim on the hems [of the dress] seemed superfluous, even frivolous, but at the same time it comforted her, as though the idea that a seamstress had thought to adorn clothing so innocently implied that somewhere, innocence was safe.
— Gaèl Baudino
An innocent bird is not innocent from the insect’s point of view! Only man can attain the rank of innocence through becoming a peaceful vegetarian!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
As long as you stay as a good hearted person, you will keep the innocence in your face.
— Mehmet Murat ildan
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
Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.
— Mark Twain
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
— Albert Einstein
I learned from him that often contradiction is the clearest way to truth
— Patti Smith, Just Kids
Morality was probably the invention of unattractive men. Whom else does it benefit really
— Manu Joseph, The Illicit Happiness of Other People
Of course it is,’ said the Duchess, who seemed ready to agree to everythingthat Alice said; ‘there’s a large mustard-mine near here. And the moralof that is– “The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours.
— Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Montaigne said long ago: "Were I not to follow the straight road for its straightness, I should follow it for having found by experience that in the end it is commonly the happiest and most useful track." The doctrine of interest rightly understood is not then new, but among the Americans of our time it finds universal acceptance; it has become popular there; you may trace it at the bottom of all their actions, you will remark it in all they say.
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
All around the Mediterranean you'll find cultures that believe men can't control themselves and shouldn't have to try.
— Sheri S. Tepper
{We} have not to crown the exceptional man who knows he can rule
—  rather we must crown the much more exceptional man who knows he can’t.
If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say "give them up," for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
SIR DANIEL was a large man, broad of shoulder...his eyes were rather small above the double pouches and the look they fixed on Dalgliesh gave nothing away. Looking at his bland, unrevealing face sparked off for Dalgliesh a childhood memory. A multi-millionaire, in an age when a million meant something, had been brought to dinner at the rectory by a local landowner who was one of his father's churchwardens. He too had been a big man, affable an easy guest. The fourteen-year-old Adam [Dalgliesh] had been disconcerted to discover during the dinner conversation that he was rather stupid. He had then learned that the ability to make a great deal of money in a particular way is a talent highly advantageous to it possessor and possibly beneficial to others, but implies no virtue, wisdom or intelligence beyond expertise in a lucrative field.
— P.D. James
Evolution of mind was altogether another matter and belonged to another science, but whether one traced descent from the shark or the wolf was immaterial even in morals. This matter had been discussed for ages without scientific result. La Fontaine and other fabulists maintained that the wolf, even in morals, stood higher than man; and in view of the late civil war, Adams had doubts of his own on the facts of moral evolution:
— Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
It was not that Madame Santeuil's moral values had altered, but only her view of the moral values of others.
— Marcel Proust, Jean Santeuil
He thanked God that she had been born and sheltered to such innocence. But he knew life, its foulness as well as its fairness, its greatness in spite of the slime that infested it, and by God he was going to have his say on it to the world. Saints in heaven - how could they be anything but fair and pure? No praise to them. But saints in slime - ah, that was the everlasting wonder! That was what made life worth while. To see moral grandeur rising out of cesspools of iniquity; to rise himself and first glimpse beauty, faint and far, through mud- dripping eyes; to see out of weakness, and frailty, and viciousness, and all abysmal brutishness, arising strength, and truth, and high spiritual endowment-
— Jack London, Martin Eden
...there’s a great deal which I don’t understandin people. In a human being everything should be beautiful: the face, the clothes, the soul, the thoughts. . . .Often I see a beautiful face and clothes, so beautiful that my head gets giddy with rapture; but as for the soul and thoughts,my God! In a beautiful outside there’s sometimes hidden such a black soul that no whitening can rub it off...
— Anton Chekhov, The Wood Demon: A Comedy in Four Acts
Politics really must be a rotten profession considering what awful moral cowards most politicians become as soon as they get the job.
— Martha Gellhorn, The Face of War