Curiosity Quotes - Page 22

• My curiosity to see the melancholy spectacle of the executions was so strong that I could not resist it, although I was sensible that I would suffer much from it.... I got upon a scaffold near the fatal tree so that I could clearly see all the dismal scene.... I was most terribly shocked, and thrown into a very deep melancholy.

  James Boswell

  Death, Strong, Tree

  4 Copy quote

• When the Prince of Piedmont [later Charles Emmanuel IV, King of Sardinia] was seven years old, his preceptor instructing him in mythology told him all the vices were enclosed in Pandora's box. "What! all!" said the Prince. "Yes, all." "No," said the Prince; "curiosity must have been without.

  Horace Walpole

  Kings, Years, Vices

  5 Copy quote

• Theology, I am persuaded, derives its initial impulse from a religious wavering; for there is quite as much, or more, that is mysterious and calculated to awaken scientific curiosity in the intercourse with God, and it [is] a problem quite analogous to that of theology.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Religious, Wavering, Mysterious

  Charles Sanders Peirce “Scientific meta-physics”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Reason, in a strict sense, as meaning the judgment of truth and falsehood, can never, of itself, be any motive to the will, and can have no influence but so far as it touches some passion or affection. Abstract relations of ideas are the object of curiosity, not of volition. And matters of fact, where they are neither good nor evil, where they neither excite desire nor aversion, are totally indifferent, and whether known or unknown, whether mistaken or rightly apprehended, cannot be regarded as any motive to action.

  David Hume

  Truth, Passion, Ideas

  David Hume, Tom L. Beauchamp (2007). “A Dissertation on the Passions: The Natural History of Religion : a Critical Edition”, p.24, Oxford University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave.

  Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

  Death, Determination, Lying

  "The Pure and the Impure". Book by Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, 1932.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• So many of the properties of matter, especially when in the gaseous form, can be deduced from the hypothesis that their minute parts are in rapid motion, the velocity increasing with the temperature, that the precise nature of this motion becomes a subject of rational curiosity. Daniel Bernoulli, Herapath, Joule, Kronig, Clausius, &c., have shewn that the relations between pressure, temperature and density in a perfect gas can be explained by supposing the particles move with uniform velocity in straight lines, striking against the sides of the containing vessel and thus producing pressure.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Moving, Perfect, Velocity

  4 Copy quote

• ... when you make it a moral necessity for the young to dabble in all the subjects that the books on the top shelf are written about, you kill two very large birds with one stone: you satisfy precious curiosities, and you make them believe that they know as much about life as people who really know something. If college boys are solemnly advised to listen to lectures on prostitution, they will listen; and who is to blame if some time, in a less moral moment, they profit by their information?

  Katharine Fullerton Gerould

  Sex, Believe, Book

  4 Copy quote

• Fear is the enemy of curiosity.

  Warren Berger

  Enemy

  Warren Berger (2014). “A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas”, p.58, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• From my experience, the only thing you can do is take what's written on the page and try, through your own curiosity and investigation, to make it your own and honor what the original intent was.

  Colin Farrell

  Honor, Trying, Pages

  "Colin Farrell Talks DEAD MAN DOWN, Working with Noomi Rapace, SAVING MR. BANKS, WINTER’S TALE, EPIC, and More". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. March 6, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have a very sissy job, where I go to work and get my hair done, and people do my makeup, and I go and say lines and people spoil me rotten. And everyone has that kind of curiosity of how far can you go, how far can you take it. I think it's always good testing yourself.

  Christian Bale

  Jobs, Thinking, Makeup

  "Christian Bale May Kill Someone Yet". Interview with John H. Richardson, www.esquire.com. November 15, 2010.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I call horses divine mirrors - they reflect back the emotions you put in. If you put in love and respect and kindness and curiosity, the horse will return that.

  Allan Hamilton

  Horse, Kindness, Mirrors

  4 Copy quote

• If need is the mother of all inventions, then curiosity is its genetic father undoubtedly.

  Anuj

  Mother, Father, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• Illuminated by the same joyful curiosity and erudition, lyric writing, and plain love of life that made a classic of Archie Carr's The Windward Road.

  Peter Matthiessen

  Writing, Love Life, Classic

  7 Copy quote

• All inquiry into antiquity, all curiosity respecting the Pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis,--is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There and Then, and introduce in its place the Here and Now.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ohio, Cities, Circles

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2006). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems”, p.133, Bantam Classics

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public. That statement only is fit to be made public, which you have come at in attempting to satisfy your own curiosity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Writing, Fit, Made

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1320, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am interested in a hundred things, but only slightly.

  Mason Cooley

  Hundred

  4 Copy quote

• Curiosity is an asset mostly frittered away.

  Mason Cooley

  Assets

  4 Copy quote

• Curiosity engenders both science and scandal.

  Mason Cooley

  Scandal

  4 Copy quote

• The aim of poetry, it appears, is to fill the mind with lofty thoughts--not to give it joy, but to give it a grand and somewhat gaudy sense of virtue. The essay is a weapon against the degenerate tendencies of the age. The novel, properly conceived, is a means of uplifting the spirit; its aim is to inspire, not merely to satisfy the low curiosity of man in man.

  H. L. Mencken

  Uplifting, Mean, Men

  H. L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (2010). “H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series”, Hubsta Ltd

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Among the innumerable mortifications which waylay human arrogance on every side may well be reckoned our ignorance of the most common objects and effects, a defect of which we become more sensible by every attempt to supply it. Vulgar and inactive minds confound familiarity with knowledge and conceive themselves informed of the whole nature of things when they are shown their form or told their use; but the speculatist, who is not content with superficial views, harasses himself with fruitless curiosity, and still, as he inquires more, perceives only that he knows less.

  Samuel Johnson

  Education, Peace, Truth

  4 Copy quote

• It was in the beginning of the month of November, 17--, when a young English gentleman, who had just left the university of Oxford, made use of the liberty afforded him, to visit some parts of the north of England; and curiosity extended his tour into the adjacent frontier of the sister country.

  Walter Scott

  Country, Book, Oxford

  Sir Walter Scott (1855). “The Waverley Novels: In Twelve Volumes, Printed from the Latest English Editions, Embracing the Author's Last Corrections, Prefaces, and Notes”, p.327

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sight is the least sensual of all the senses. And we strain ourselves to see, see, see--everything, everything through the eye, inone mode of objective curiosity.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Knowledge, Eye, Sight

  13 Copy quote

• The curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for a scourge.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Knowing, Given

  Michel de Montaigne (1872). “All the Essays of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne”, p.535

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've noticed that people who get married cease to be curious.

  Anton Chekhov

  Marriage, People, Married

  13 Copy quote

• Curiosity and courtesy are very often at variance.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Courtesy, Variance

  4 Copy quote