Childhood Innocence Quotes

This was me before I knew about anything hard, when my whole life was packed lunches and art projects and spelling quizzes. ~ Nina LaCour

What time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life? ~ Leo Tolstoy

But I think parents aren't teachers anymore. Parents
or a whole lot of us, at least
lead by mouth instead of by example. It seems to me that if a child's hero is their mother or father
or even better, both of them in tandem
then the rough road of learning and experience is going to be smoothed some. And every little bit of smoothing helps, in this rough old world that wants children to be miniature adults, devoid of charm and magic and the beauty of innocence. ~ Robert McCammon

I read Norman Lock's The Boy in His Winter with delight and amazement. Styled in the vernacular of a rapidly changing America, it stays true to the themes of Mark Twain's original: class relations, race and slavery, childhood innocence, moral hypocrisy - and, of course, the stark beauty and unforgiving nature of America's greatest river. I finished this absolutely elegant narrative feeling that Huck Finn has never been more alive. ~ David Oshinsky

I was thinking of how, when we think of loss in our life, how our sense of 'home' was the first thing to go. You know, we lose that place of childhood innocence, of feeling protected. And so many of us spend the rest of our lives trying to reclaim that place called home, that life made simple again. ~ Tabitha Vohn

I could bring the difficult childhood card but that would be a lie because I had the most decent example of a good childhood. I never lacked love, on the contrary, I think I had an excess of it because too much love made me incapable of seeing the evilness of this world. And when I did, it made me start to question all the good in this world. ~ Lunga Noélia Izata

For children, childhood is timeless. It is always the present. Everything is in the present tense. Of course, they have memories. Of course, time shifts a little for them and Christmas comes round in the end. But they don't feel it. Today is what they feel, and when they say 'When I grow up,' there is always an edge of disbelief - how could they ever be other than what they are? ~ Ian McEwan

Everyone is guilty of something, and everyone still harbors a memory of childhood innocence, no matter how many layers of life wrap around it. Humanity is innocent; humanity is guilty, and both states are undeniably true. ~ Neal Shusterman

The innocence of childhood is like the innocence of a lot of animals. ~ Clint Eastwood

You either keep your childhood innocence or you rot! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Where once my careless childhood strayed, / A stranger yet to pain. ~ Thomas Gray

When I was a child, I used to look at the sky and wonder how were stars fixed on the canopy and why didn't they fall on Earth. I also wondered why they disappeared in day time. When I grew up, all my questions got answered, but I lost my innocence. ~ Tarif Naaz

When he talked, there was a sort of mushy sound to his pronunciation that was charming because one sensed that it betrayed not so much an impediment in his speech as a quality of his soul, a sort of vestige of early childhood innocence that he had never lost. Each consonant he could not pronounce appeared to be another instance of a hardness of which he was incapable. ~ Marcel Proust

No matter what happens, always Keep your childhood innocence. It's the most important thing. ~ Federico Fellini

In an age of iPhones and Playstations, it's great to see that somebody's still rocking the bus-on-a-string. ~ Brandon Stanton

A child's innocence is the one gift, that once stolen, can never be replaced. ~ Jaeda DeWalt

We're children. We're supposed to be childish. ~ George R R Martin

Injurious Hermia! most ungrateful maid! Have you conspired, have you with the contrived To bait me with this foul derision? Is all the counsel that we two have shared, The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent, When we have chid the hasty-footed time For parting us,-O, and is all forgot? All school=days' friendship, childhood innocence? We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, Have with our neelds created both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, Both warbling of one song, both in one key; As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds, Had been incorporate. So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet an union in partition; Two lovely berries moulded on one stem; So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart, Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, Due but to one, and crowned with one crest, And will you rent our ancient love asunder, To join with men in scorning your poor friend? It is not friendly, 'tis not maidenly: Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it, Though I alone do feel the injury. ~ William Shakespeare

He started touching me. 'How old are you?' He ran his hands over my nose, my mouth, my eyes. I was paralysed. 'Nine. What about you?' 'Nine.' 'When's your birthday?' 'The twelfth of September. And yours?' 'The Twentieth of November.' 'What's your name?' 'Michele. Michele Amitrano. What year are you in at school?' 'The fourth. What about you?' 'The fourth.' 'Same.' 'Same' 'I'm thirsty.' I gave him the bottle ~ Niccolo Ammaniti

Who is that blond child laughing as he runs after his colored marbles? [my marbles]
It's me
And who is the poet writing this poem?
That blond child who laughed as he ran after his colored marbles ~ Pierre Albert-Birot

Back to my childhood where those monsters reside. They snack on innocence and dine on self esteem. ~ Jimmy Buffett

It actually may be that the shadows of the so-called middle-class utopia always cast heavily on children, particularly in their adolescence. And this is so because the middle class is the proprietor and perpetuator of the category of childhood; living within the economic advantage of not needing children to work (or serve as marriage pawns for continued nobility) leads to a conception of childhood innocence. The child is hidden from the world behind the structural walls of family and education. Middle-class parents take on a heavy burden of seeing it as their core vocation to protect and advance their children. But this projecting and advancing appears to always come with tension as the innocent middle-class child turns into the alien middle-class adolescent.[2] ~ Andrew Root

I prefer to write books for children instead of reading them. But I do strongly believe in childhood and in respecting childhood innocence. I don't like books for children that deal with adult themes. ~ Philip Kerr

My happiest memory of childhood was my first birthday in reform school. This teacher took an interest in me. In fact, he gave me the first birthday presents I ever got: a box of Cracker Jacks and a can of ABC shoe polish. ~ Flip Wilson

KitKat 13:18:45: Who would your ideal prince be? Your childhood friend, Prince Charming, or a strong warrior?

Gallows Humor 13:19:10: I don't want to know which Disney Princess I am. I've told you before, stop doing online quizzes. Leave it.

Gallows Humor 13:22:19: He would love me for myself.

KitKat 13:22:57: Tell me about your dress. ~ Lauren James

Every single person in jail for a violent crime had a nightmare childhood. ~ Rob Reiner

All great art originates from the innocent child within us expressing itself through the wisdom, experience and skill of an adult. ~ Richard Schmid

My mother had no idea that her daughter would turn out to be a writer, but she would not let me go through a day of my childhood without music. ~ Virginia Euwer Wolff

I grew up watching many parents use God as a threat towards their children. "Sit down and be still or God will get angry", "Listen to your mama and papa or God will get angry", "Don't say that word, it will make God angry." As a result, we have all of these adults today relating to God in that very same mindframe. God is a "sky daddy" literally sitting upon the clouds in our atmosphere, watching and getting ready to punish and get angry! A storyland God that is but a symbol of figments of childhood that were planted and then nourished throughout a person's growth, until now. It is not a sustainable God who has evolved along with a person's growth, as Someone a person can come to know in an organic and genuine way. It is a phantasmic God which is a staple of fear and tradition. And this is an absolute disservice that parents have done for their children. ~ C. JoyBell C.

What captivated me about you was that you opened the door to another world for me. The values that dominated my childhood had no place there. That world enchanted me. I could leave the real world behind and be someone else, without any ties or obligations. With you, I was elsewhere, in a foreign place, foreign to myself. You gave me access to another dimension when I'd always rejected any fixed identity and just worn different identities on top of each other, though none of them were mine.
By speaking to you in English, I made your language mine. I've continued to talk to you in English right up to this day, even when you answered me in French. For me, English, which I knew mainly through you and through books, was from the start like a private language that preserved our intimacy against the intrusion of the real world, and its prevailing social normals. I felt like I was building a protected and protective world with you. ~ Andre Gorz

There is no basis in text, tradition, or even in contemporary practice (if that were enough), for finding in the Constitution a right to demand judicial consideration of newly discovered evidence of innocence brought forward after conviction. My concern is that in making life easier for ourselves we not appear to make it harder for the lower federal courts, imposing upon them the burden of regularly analyzing newly-discovered-evidence-of-innocence claims in capital cases (in which event such federal claims, it can confidently be predicted, will become routine and even repetitive). ~ Antonin Scalia

How come some stories have an ending when they never had a starting? ~ Neeraj Agnihotri

The only thing that disturbs me is that many psychopaths say they had a very happy childhood. ~ David Lynch

The Luidaeg sighed and put her arms around me, pulling me close. "Come here," she said. "I need to hold someone, and you need to be held. It's a fair trade. Just for a little while, and then we can go on being what we are." I thought about objecting, but dismissed the idea and nestled against her, enjoying the feeling of security given by knowing someone bigger and stronger than I was would stop anything from hurting me. That's all childhood is, after all: strong arms to hold back the dark, a story to keep the shadows dancing, and a candle to mark the long journey into day. A song to keep the flights of angels at bay. How many miles to Babylon? Sorry. I don't care. ~ Seanan McGuire

It seemed as if the whole of the world was slowly being stripped of innocence. Or maybe I was seeing a little too clearly. ~ Patti Smith

The women's entire education should be planned in relation to men. To please men, to be useful to them, to win their love and respect, to raise them as children, care for them as adults… these are women's duties in all ages and these are what they should be taught from childhood. ~ Jacques Rousseau

The heroes of my childhood were Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy ... but I was inspired by the ideals of our 40th president and became a Republican. ~ Mike Pence

I do think it's good to remember that childish things are made for children, and that, however pleasantly lurid the promise of a return to the clarity of childhood may be, an infatuation with the childish reveals only that one has failed to grow past it. ~ Lauren Faust

Reading is the scourge of childhood because, in a sense, it creates adulthood. ~ Neil Postman

My childhood was really comfortable and secure, but school was a nightmare. I was a lot taller than the other girls and they called me Gitte the giraffe. ~ Brigitte Nielsen

For most of us, dreams come true only after they do not matter, Only in childhood do we ever have the chance of making dreams come true when they mean everything. ~ Lois Wyse

If I could perform on stage with any musical act or performer, it would be Sugar Ray, just to fulfill my childhood dream of singing with Mark McGrath. ~ Chelsea Kane

My childhood was surrounded by books and writing. From a very early age I was fascinated by storytelling, by the printed word, by language, by ideas. So I would seek them out. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Maybe universal nostalgia doesn't exist. Maybe each of us carries our own personal version of the better times. It's at about twnety-two years that we all begin to think of our childhood as the good ol' days and everything afterwards exists as a slow-motion face plant. The fall continues, through marriage, through career building, through parenthood, through old age, until we finally touch nose to ground. At twenty-two years old, I've just started, but I think I can already smell my own grave. ~ Caleb J. Ross

Lift up your eyes from your books, from your past, from your hurts and look upon all people with love, because when you look into another's eyes and see innocence, you find it in yourself. ~ Dragos Bratasanu

"Rachel ... you need help."
I laugh and it's the same bitter laugh I remember him giving when we met so many weeks ago. "So do you."
"I love you." Isaiah says it so simply that my heart soars and sinks at the same time.
"I love you," I whisper. "Did you ever think that loving someone could hurt so bad?"
Isaiah shakes his head and stares out the window.
"What's going to happen to us?" I ask. Because I don't know how the two of us can continue forward. Isaiah refuses to let me in. It's sort of cruel. He's brought me close with his stories of his childhood and with his words of love, but he can't relinquish control. I refuse to be with someone who won't treat me as an equal. ~ Katie McGarry

and that makes him wish all over again that his dad would stop crying, so he can have a turn. ~ Nick Cave

We all have a childhood dream that when there is love, everything goes like silk, but the reality is that marriage requires a lot of compromise. ~ Raquel Welch

Initially, a simple phrase chased round and round in Cecilia's thoughts: Of course, of course. How had she not seen it? Everything was explained. The whole day, the weeks before, her childhood. A lifetime. It was clear to her now. Why else take so long to choose a dress, or fight over a vase, or find everything so different, or be unable to leave? What had made her so blind, so obtuse? ~ Ian McEwan

I know that a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania is about the most random place for a country singer to come from, but I had an awesome childhood. ~ Taylor Swift

Nostalgia washes over me with tons of memors and lifetime rolled on this land. Every oblivious memory from the childhood wraps open in the fragrance of these busy roads and familiar land, long signals, irritating traffic,honking cars,rushing people,excessive pollution defining Delhi at its best. ~ Parul Wadhwa

There is, therefore, a temptation to return to an explanation which automatically discharges the victim of responsibility: it seems quite adequate to a reality in which nothing strikes us more forcefully than the utter innocence of the individual caught in the horror machine and his utter inability to change his fate. Terror, however, is only in the last instance of its development a mere form of government. In order to establish a totalitarian regime, terror must be presented as an instrument for carrying out a specific ideology; and that ideology must have won the adherence of many, and even a majority, before terror can be stabilized. The point for the historian is that the Jews, before becoming the main victims of modern terror, were the center of Nazi ideology. And an ideology which has to persuade and mobilize people cannot choose its victim arbitrarily. ~ Hannah Arendt

My childhood in Corfu shaped my life. If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give every child the gift of my childhood. ~ Gerald Durrell

They say your childhood influences your tastes and interests, or your approach if you're an artist. So what you create, whatever you saw, whatever your childhood was like - it influences how you're going to end up. ~ Brett Ratner

She waited uneasily and shyly. From afar he saw that her eyes
clearly her father's
were filled with desperate innocence. He pictured, in her, his own redemption. Violins and lit candles revolved in the sky. Leo ran forward with flowers out-thrust. ~ Bernard Malamud

Overcooked, flabby pasta or a blob of tomato ketchup was enough to incense Frank; a plate of soggy pasta in Matteo's Italian restaurant in Los Angeles, owned by his childhood buddy, Matty Jordan, had Frank storming into the kitchens. He looked around wildly, "Where are all the Italians?" he roared at the startled Filipino kitchen staff. Not content, he shot back upstairs and threw his plate of pasta against the wall. As he walked out, he dipped his finger in the tomato sauce and signed the smear: Picasso (Matty very good-naturedly put a frame around this later). ~ Fiona Ross