Quotes About Curiosity

But a reader's ambition knows no bounds.

The starting point is a question.

A library is an ever-growing entity; it multiples seemingly unaided, it reproduces itself by purchase, theft, borrowings, gifts, by suggesting gaps through association, by demanding completion of sorts.

No one stepping for the first time into a room made of books can know instinctively how to behave, what is expected, what is promised, what is allowed. One may be overcome by horror--at the cluster or the vastness, the stillness, the mocking reminder of everything one doesn't know, the surveillance--and some of that overwhelming feeling may cling on, even after the rituals and conventions are learned, the geography mapped, and the natives found friendly.

Libraries, have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I've been seduced by their labyrinthine logic." - The Library at Night

Libraries are not, never will be, used by everyone.

At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book - that string of confused, alien ciphers - shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.

the satisfaction of one answer merely leads to asking another question, and so on into infinity.

We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.

I can sympathize with people's pains, but not with their pleasure. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.

I am interested in everything,' interrupted Gumbril Junior. 'Which comes to the same thing,' said his father parenthetically, 'as being interested in nothing.

Even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes even science.

the moral is plain. Avoid, if possible, being bored yourself or boring others.

It takes a certain amount of intelligence and imagination to realize the extraordinary queerness and mysteriousness of the world in which we live. The fools, the innumerable fools, take it all for granted, skate about cheerfully on the surface and never think of inquiring what's underneath.

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know.

The secret of genius is to carry the child into old age.

Whatever is he saying? said a voice, very near, distinct and shrill through the warblings of the Super-Wurlitzer. The Savage violently started and, uncovering his face, looked round. Five khaki twins, each with the stump of a long eclair in his right hand, and their identical faces variously smeared with liquid chocolate, were standing in a row, puggily goggling at him. They met his eyes and simultaneously grinned. One of them pointed with his eclair butt. Is she dead?he asked.

Everything's incredible, if you can skin off the crust of obviousness our habits put on it. Every object and event contains within itself an infinity of depths within depths.

Lord Edward took a scientific interest in the sexual activities of axolotls and chickens, guinea pigs and frogs; but any reference to the corresponding activities of humans made him painfully uncomfortable.

how little one knows, really, about anything! And how grossly incurious one remains about so many things, what an enormous number of intrinsically astonishing achievements one merely takes for granted!

An intellectual is someone who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex.

The genius of life is to take the spirit of childhood into old age.

And, anyhow, hadn't you better wait till you actually see the new world?