Quotes About Curiosity

He found himself supposing innumerable and wonderful things.

What he'd find there, of course, was up to Pete. But he was sure there were magicians in Tampico and leopard-skins and golden thrones in Juba. Dragons and pirates and white temples where magic dwelt. And best of all, the places he didn't know about yet, the ones that would come as surprises. Oh, not entirely pleasant surprises. There should be a hint of peril, a touch of terror, to emphasize the brightness of adventure... (Before I Wake...)

As the boy looked at it, my thing moved and he whispered It is splendid! Do let me try its love-making ... And I was too polite to disobey.

What I want is to open up. I want to know what's inside me. I want everybody to open up. I'm like an imbecile with a can opener in his hand, wondering where to begin-- to open up the earth. I know that underneath the mess everything is marvelous. I'm sure of it.

Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.

My hunger and curiosity drive me forward in all directions at once.

A man, when he's burning up with passion, wants to see things; he wants to see everything, even how they make water. And while it's all very nice to know that a woman has a mind, literature coming from the cold corpse of a whore is the last thing to be served in bed.

Everybody goes the wrong way, everything is confused, chaotic, disorderly. But nobody is ever lost or hurt, nothing is stolen, no blows are exchanged. It is a kind of ferment which is created by reason of the fact that for a Greek every event, no matter how stale, is always unique. He is always doing the same thing for the first time: he is curious, avidly curious, and experimental. He experiments for the sake of experimenting, not to establish a better or more efficient way of doing things.

How a man can wonder all day in an empty belly, and even get an erection once in a while, is one of those mysteries which are too easily explained by the anatomists of the soul.

The name Rebecca excited me. I had always wanted to meet a woman called Rebecca—and not Becky.

There are people to whom you feel immediately attracted, not because you like them, but because you detest them. You detest them so heartily that your curiosity is aroused; you come back to them again and again to study them, to arouse in yourself a feeling of compassion which is really absent. You do things for them, not because you feel any sympathy for them, but because their suffering is incomprehensible to you.

He was going to escort us to the Temple of Jupiter and the Theseion and other places as soon as we had had our fill of the Acropolis. We never went to these places, of course. We told him to drive into town, find a cool spot and order some ice cream.

A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play.

Don't moralize at me! I have no love For images, old gods, prophetic words. I want to talk to Utnapishtim! Tell me how.

There is a principal which is proof against all information, which is proof against all arguments, which cannot fail to keep man in everlasting ignorance; that principal is - Contempt prior to investigation !

As I said, humans know nothing at birth! We have to learn! But most of us do not know that! And, again, what we don't know, we don't know that we don't know!

Queequeq, my fine friend, does this sort of thing often happen?

am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in. By

With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.

Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all.—Why then do you try to "enlarge" your mind? Subtilize it.

There's an incomparable rush that comes from finding dinosaur bones. You know you're the first person to lay hands on a critter that lived 80 or 90 million years ago.

I've been collecting linguistic oddities for years and years, ever since I was small. I've got loads of notebooks where I've jotted down things I couldn't make sense of.