138 quotes found
“Grown-ups have developed an unpleasant habit of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish.”
“[Murder] doesn't concern the victim and the guilty only. It affects the innocent too. You and I are innocent, but the shadow of murder has touched us. We don't know how that shadow is going to affe...”
“Our purpose is to find out whether innocence, the moment it becomes involved in an action, can avoid committing murder.”
“It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader. The sky was so starry, so bright that, looking at it, one could not help asking oneself whether ill-humour...”
“During the first day, curious at having outsiders among them, a long stream of inmates came over and talked with me. Remarkably, according to what they told me, nearly every inmate in the prison di...”
“When I saw him look at me with lust, I dropped my eyes but, in glancing away from him, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. And I saw myself, suddenly, as he saw me, my pale face, the way the mu...”
“O God, I love you to the edge of madness, Venetia, but I'm not mad yet--not so mad that I don't know how disastrous it might be to you--to us both! You don't realize what an advantage I should be t...”
“His own naivety taunted him like a flicker of madness.”
“Innocence isn't something we lose, but realise we don't need.”
“Innocence is a kind of insanity”
“It is photography itself that creates the illusion of innocence. Its ironies of frozen narrative lend to its subjects an apparent unawareness that they will change or die. It is the future they are...”
“Travellers scowl at us, and countrymen give us scornful names. 'Strider' I am to one fat man who lives within a day's march of foes that would freeze his heart, or lay his little town in ruin, if h...”
“But in the absence of eye-witness there's always a doubt, sometimes only the shadow of a doubt. The law says 'reasonable doubt', but I think a defendant's entitled to the shadow of doubt. There's a...”
“Atheism is aristocratic the idea of a great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popular. ”
“Maturity is the moment one regains one's innocence.”
“How happy is the blameless vestals lot!The world forgetting, by the world forgot.Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!Each prayr accepted, and each wish resignd”
“They've done it before and they'll do it again and when they do it -- seems that only the children weep. Good night.”
“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 crea...”
“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 l...”
“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 in...”
