Quotations: Curiosity

Fear paralyzes; curiosity empowers. Be more interested than afraid.
Patricia Alexander

Culture is. . . properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.
Matthew Arnold

Few writers have had less journalistic talent than James, and this is his defect, for the supreme masters have one trait in common with the childish scribbling mass, the vulgar curiosity of a police-court reporter.
W. H. Auden

Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all -- that has been my religion.
John Burroughs

Hack fiction exploits curiosity without really satisfying it or making connections between it and anything else in the world.
Vincent Canby

Curiosity . . . endows the people who have it with a generosity in argument and a serenity in cheerful willingness to let life take the form it will.
Alistair Cooke

Curiosity is free-wheeling intelligence.
Alistair Cooke

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
E E Cummings

Although there may be nothing new under the sun, what is old is new to us and so rich and astonishing that we never tire of it. If we do tire of it, if we lose our curiosity, we have lost something of infinite value, because to a high degree it is curiosity that gives meaning and savour to life.
Robertson Davies

Creatures whose mainspring is curiosity enjoy the accumulating of facts far more than the pausing at times to reflect on those facts.
Clarence Day

Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly.
Arnold Edinborough

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality.
Albert Einstein

Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Curiosity is one of the lowest of the human faculties. You will have noticed in daily life that when people are inquisitive they nearly always have bad memories and are usually stupid at bottom.
E. M. Forster

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
Anatole France

Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.
Graham Henry Greene

I'm of the mind that even people who have limitations, if they have a curiosity, they will find a way to explore it.
Tish Grier

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.
Samuel Johnson

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.
Charles Lamb

There are two sorts of curiosity -- the momentary and the permanent. The momentary is concerned with the odd appearance on the surface of things. The permanent is attracted by the amazing and consecutive life that flows on beneath the surface of things.
Robert Lynd

Curiosity is the key to creativity.
Akio Morita

Literature, particularly fiction, is not the pure medium we sometimes assume it is. It is affected by things other than its own intrinsic quality; by a curiosity or lack of it about the people it deals with, their outlook, their way of life.
Vance Palmer

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
Dorothy Parker

Four be the things I'd been better without:/ Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Dorothy Parker

Curiosity is only vanity. Most frequently we wish not to know, but to talk. We would not take a sea voyage for the sole pleasure of seeing without hope of ever telling.
Blaise Pascal

Do not speak of evil for it creates curiosity in the hearts of the young.
American Indian Proverb

I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
Eleanor Roosevelt

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity: no really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it.
George Bernard Shaw

Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.
James Stephens

Disinterested intellectual curiosity is the life blood of real civilization.
G. M. Trevelyan

Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning.
William A. Ward

Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.
Richard Whately

Seize the moment of excited curiosity on any subject to solve your doubts; for if you let it pass, the desire may never return, and you may remain in ignorance.
William Wirt

Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.
Steven Wright

My Alma mater was books, a good library . . . . I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.
Malcolm X