When I have one martini, I feel bigger, wiser, taller. When I have a second, I feel superlative. When I have more, there's no holding me.
William FaulknerRead
When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they dont really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not be old enough to desire the fruits of it...his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it...
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote explores the misconception of childhood innocence, suggesting that children possess a deeper awareness than adults recognize.
William Faulkner's quote challenges the notion of childhood innocence by arguing that children, despite their naivety, are aware of the complexities and moral dilemmas that exist in the world. It suggests that what is often labeled as innocence is, in reality, a lack of desire or understanding for the darker aspects of life, rather than a true absence of knowledge or awareness.
Themes
InnocenceChildrenIgnoranceAwarenessUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the complexities of childhood during a parenting seminar.
More from William Faulkner
All quotes →I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.
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Maybe times are never strange to women: it is just one continuous monotonous thing full of the repeated follies of their menfolks.
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He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that any more than for pride or fear....One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.
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Ever since then I have believed that God is not only a gentleman and a sport; he is a Kentuckian too.
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Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but that's the only way you can do anything really good.
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