Quotes About Curiosity

all I feel sure of are questions.

The urge to know scrapes against the inability to know.

he that knows all that Learning ever writ, knows only this--that he knows nothing yet. [Antonius Diogenes, trans. by Zeno Ninis]

Stranger, whoever you are, open this to learn what will amaze you.

Ninth-grade U.S. history: Not to hurt feelings but that chapter you assigned? That was all "Columbus is great," "The Indians sure loved Thanksgiving," "Let's brainwash everyone." I found way better stuff at the library

How? How did Jutta understand so much more about how the world worked? While he knew so little?

I think about how Grandpa Z says the sky is blue because it's dusty and octopuses can unscrew the tops off jars and starfish have eyes at the tips of their arms. I think: No matter what happens, no matter how wretched and gloomy everything can get, at least Mrs. Sabo got to feel this.

But seven-year-old Werner seems to float. He is undersized and his ears stick out and he speaks with a high, sweet voice; the whiteness of his hair stops people in their tracks. Snowy, milky, chalky. A color that is the absence of color. Every morning he ties his shoes, packs newspaper inside his coat as insulation against the cold, and begins interrogating the world.

Ojalá la vida fuera como una novela de Julio Verne y uno pudiera pasar las páginas cuando lo necesita para saber lo que va a suceder más adelante.

Max looks up from his book and says, "Mutti, what goes around the world but stays in a corner?" "I don't know, Max." "A postage stamp.

The other boys crane their necks. Dr. Hauptmann's lips are pink and his eyelids are improbably thin. As though he is watching Werner even when he blinks. He says, "Make them all.

she loves to ask them about their lives, to wonder what adventures they've had, what lusts, what secret follies they carry in their hearts.

That little rock you're so curious about may have seen Alaric sack Rome; it may have glittered in the eyes of Pharaohs. Scythian queens might have danced all night wearing it. Wars might have been fought over it.

Her great-uncle seems kind, curious, and entirely sane. Stillness: this is what he radiates more than anything else. The stillness of a tree. Of a mouse blinking in the dark.

To know her is to realize the thousand forms of inquiry.

Time slows. The attic disappears. Jutta disappears. Has anyone ever spoken so intimately about the very things Werner is most curious about? Open

Jutta drags herself closer; she watches her brother with outsize eyes. A piano chases the violins. Then woodwinds. The strings sprint, woodwinds fluttering behind. More instruments join in. Flutes? Harps? The song races, seems to loop back over itself. "Werner?" Jutta whispers. He blinks;

Guarded curiosity.

They lie on their stomachs and page through comics, feeling the pleasure of being outside of school, glancing at each other now and then as if curious to learn whether their friendship will continue to exist in another place.

What was this hunger that drove me to seek more than what I already had?

with a prodigious curiosity but little perseverance.

Parachuting through the air around him, blown out of the firs, are hundreds of pine needles bundled in twos. He catches one, imagines it as a little man with a truncated torso and long slender legs. The NeedleMan ventures across the clearing on his pointy feet.

I suppose that is the point, no? To make us wonder?

He says there are sixty-five million specimens in this place, and if you have the right teacher, each can be as interesting as the last.