…that the unexamined life is not worth living
Our note: Socrates at his trial, explaining why he cannot stop questioning people.
Verified in the full text of Apology on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1656
Quotes about curiosity
31 verified quotes from 18 writers, c. 399 BC to 1911.
Quotes 1 to 16 of 31, page 1 of 2.
Curiosity runs through these lines as a habit of looking twice. Sherlock Holmes tells Watson that he sees but does not observe; Emerson notes that the same field shows a different picture every hour; a child hands Whitman a fistful of grass and asks what it is, and he cannot answer.
Chesterton says the world will never starve for want of wonders, only for want of wonder, and John Muir finds that anything you pick out is hitched to everything else. Every quote below was found word for word in the full text of the edition we link.
What “verified” means, and what we leave out: How we verify.
Socrates, in Apology by Plato, c. 399 BCTranslated by Benjamin Jowett (1871) When I play with my cat who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me?
Michel de Montaigne, Apology for Raimond Sebond, 1580Translated by Charles Cotton (1685) Our note: Montaigne questioning whether humans are really above animals.
Verified in the full text of Apology for Raimond Sebond on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #3600 · Collected in Essays of Michel de Montaigne
There is no desire more natural than that of knowledge
Michel de Montaigne, Of Experience, 1588Translated by Charles Cotton (1685) Our note: The opening of one of Montaigne's last essays.
Verified in the full text of Of Experience on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #3600 · Collected in Essays of Michel de Montaigne
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Hamlet, in Hamlet by William Shakespeare, 1603 Our note: Hamlet to his friend Horatio after meeting his father's ghost.
Verified in the full text of Hamlet on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #100 · Collected in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Painted the same decade: The Golden Age, Joachim Wtewael, 1605
What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason
Hamlet, in Hamlet by William Shakespeare, 1603 Our note: Hamlet on human greatness, in a speech that turns melancholy.
Verified in the full text of Hamlet on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #100 · Collected in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Painted the same decade: A Woodland Road with Travelers, Jan Brueghel the Elder, 1607
…when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford
Samuel Johnson, in The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell, 1791 Our note: Johnson to Boswell in 1777, as Boswell recorded it.
Verified in the full text of The Life of Samuel Johnson on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1564 · Collected in Life of Johnson
Painted the same decade: The Sackville Children, John Hoppner, 1796
The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine. Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember
Victor Frankenstein, in Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 1818 Our note: Victor on the joy of asking questions that marked his boyhood.
Verified in the full text of Frankenstein on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #84
Painted the same decade: Waterfall at Mont-Dore, Achille-Etna Michallon, 1818
To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, 1836 Our note: From the chapter "Beauty" in "Nature."
Verified in the full text of Nature on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #29433
Painted the same decade: Parochialstrasse in Berlin, Eduard Gaertner, 1831
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 1855 Our note: From "Song of Myself."
Verified in the full text of Song of Myself on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1322 · Collected in Leaves of Grass
Painted the same decade: Madame Frederic Breyer (Fanny Hélène Van Bruyssel, 1830–1894), Gustave Courbet, 1858
…from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1859 Our note: The last words of the first edition of the Origin.
Verified in the full text of On the Origin of Species on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1228
Painted the same decade: The Artist's Sitting Room in Ritterstrasse, Adolph Menzel, 1851
Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.
The Duchess, in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, 1865 Our note: The Duchess, who finds a moral in everything Alice says.
Verified in the full text of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #11
Painted the same decade: Boy with a Sword, Edouard Manet, 1861
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
Alice and the Cheshire Cat, in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, 1865 Our note: Alice asks the Cheshire Cat for directions.
Verified in the full text of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #11
Painted the same decade: The Source of the Loue, Gustave Courbet, 1864
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.
Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 1869 Our note: From the conclusion of Twain's account of a long voyage to Europe and the Holy Land.
Verified in the full text of The Innocents Abroad on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #3176
Painted the same decade: The Laundress, Honoré Daumier, 186[3?]
Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 1869 Our note: The sentence that follows Twain's remark on travel and prejudice.
Verified in the full text of The Innocents Abroad on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #3176
Painted the same decade: The Third-Class Carriage, Honoré Daumier, 1864
To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax— Of cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings
The Walrus, in Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, 1871 Our note: From 'The Walrus and the Carpenter', recited to Alice by Tweedledee.
Verified in the full text of Through the Looking-Glass on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #12
Painted the same decade: The Dancing Class, Edgar Degas, ca. 1870
To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.
Walter Pater, The Renaissance, 1873 Our note: From the Conclusion of Pater's Studies in the History of the Renaissance.
Verified in the full text of The Renaissance on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #2398
Painted the same decade: Eugène Murer (Hyacinthe-Eugène Meunier, 1841–1906), Auguste Renoir, 1877