Quotes about Innocence

If I'm honest I have to tell you I still read fairy-tales and I like them best of all.

We must not take from our children—or ourselves—the truth that is in the world of the imagination.

Cecily moved her lips slowly, "Now I lay me," and "Our Father," and "God bless." And then, defiantly, "Dear balloon man, please dear balloon man, Father says you know God personally, and maybe he wouldn't hear me because I'm not very big or important, so would you please make Mother get well and come home and sing me the song about the king of the cannibal islands?

In real play, which is real concentration, the child is not only outside time, he is outside himself. He has thrown himself completely into whatever it is that he is doing. A child playing a game, building a sand castle, painting a picture, is completely in what he is doing. His self-consciousness is gone; his consciousness is wholly focused outside himself.

In worldly terms, she was totally innocent; Eve before the fall, with no knowledge of good and evil. She made one realize how necessary the Fall was; without it, there would have been no human drama, and so no literature, no art, no suffering, no religion, no laughter, no joy, no sin and no redemption. Only camera work (towards which Mrs. Dobbs's painting was reaching) and sociology (which her sister, Beatrice Webb, may be said to have invented).

Others, with softer smiles, and subtler art, Can sap the principles, or taint the heart; With more address a lover's note convey, Or bribe a virgin's innocence away. Well may they rise, while I, whose rustic tongue Ne'er knew to puzzle right, or varnish wrong, Spurned as a beggar, dreaded as a spy, Live unregarded, unlamented die.   For

It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, 'whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,' and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.

The good die young — because they see it's no use living if you've got to be good.

Children are happy because they don't have a file in their minds called "All the Things That Could Go Wrong.

Maturity - among other things, the unclouded happiness of the child at play, who takes it for granted that he is at one with his play-mates.

Children at once accept joy and happiness with quick familiarity, being themselves naturally all happiness and joy.

But trailing clouds of glory do we come, From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy!.