Quotes Tagged "innocence"
Spring and Fall: To a Young Child MĂĄrgarĂ©t, are you grĂeving Over Goldengrove unleaving? LeĂĄves, lĂke the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! ĂĄs the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you wĂll weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: SĂłrrow's sprĂngs ĂĄre the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It Ăs the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.
Obedient to no man, dependent only on weather and season, without a goal before them or a roof above them, owning nothing, open to every whim of fate, the homeless wanderers lead their childlike, brave, shabby existence. They are the sons of Adam, who was driven out of Paradise; the brothers of the animals, of innocence. Out of heaven's hand they accept what is given them from moment to moment: sun, rain, fog, snow, warmth, cold, comfort, and hardship; time does not exist for them and neither does history, or ambition, or that bizarre idol called progress and evolution, in which houseowners believe so desperately. A wayfarer may be delicate or crude, artful or awkward, brave or cowardlyâhe is always a child at heart, living in the first day of creation, before the beginning of the history of the world, his life always guided by a few simple instincts and needs. He may be intelligent or stupid; he may be deeply aware of the fleeting fragility of all living things, of how pettily and fearfully each living creature carries its bit of warm blood through the glaciers of cosmic space, or he may merely follow the commands of his poor stomach with childlike greedâhe is always the opponent, the deadly enemy of the established proprietor, who hates him, despises him, or fears him, because he does not wish to be reminded that all existence is transitory, that life is constantly wilting, that merciless icy death fills the cosmos all around.
Nos-tal-gic,â Akira said, as though it were a word he had been struggling to find. Then he said a word in Japanese, perhaps the Japanese for ânostalgic.â âNos-tal-gic. It is good to be nos-tal-gic. Very important.â âReally, old fellow?â âImportant. Very important. Nostalgic. When we nostalgic, we remember. A world better than this world we discover when we grow. We remember and wish good world come back again. So very important. Just now, I had dream. I was boy. Mother, Father, close to me. in our house.â He fell silent and continued to gaze across the rubble. âAkira,â I said, sensing that the longer this talk went on, the greater was some danger I did not wish fully to articulate. âWe should move on. We have much to do.