Curiosity Quotes
Samuel Johnson leads a short list. His Rambler essay of 1750 calls curiosity one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. Edmund Burke, in his Philosophical Enquiry (1757), calls it the first and simplest emotion we discover in the human mind. Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer (1771) adds the cheerful corollary: ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no fibs.
The one flagged entry is the prediction that a hundred years after Voltaire’s day there would not be a Bible in the earth, credited to him and marked misattributed. The notes cite books of 1968 and 1972 and say that the Geneva Bible Society later used his press and house to produce Bibles.
‘In matters of science, curiosity gratified begets not indolence, but new desires.’
The First Envoy to a world always comes alone. One alien is a curiosity, two are an invasion.
There is no virtue in curiosity. In fact, it might be the most immoral desire a man can possess.
“I admit to what may be an obtrusive curiosity.”
“The quality signifies an active mind,” said Reith.
My hunger and curiosity drive me forward in all directions at once.
How these curiosities would be quite forgot, did not such idle fellows as I am put them down.
Show me a character whose life arouses my curiosity, and my flesh begins crawling with suspense.
Damned meddlers. It’s hard to know when their curiosity is official and when it’s just curiosity.