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Curiosity Quotes

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Curiosity Quotes

“Ms Rowanberg’s with you? Good, so you got her out? How is she? ” He didn’t realise that his flurry of eager questions were a definite tell, but the Lieutenant pretended not to notice. “Annoyed, sir.” The Lieutenant chuckled. “She was looking forward to taking out her anger on her captors, but I’m afraid we denied her that privilege. The five we got are not answering any calls now.” “Good,” James spat, and under his breath he added, “F*cking bastards.” He thought no one heard him, and he didn’t see the Lieutenant struggling not to grin. So he’s one of us after all, mused the Lieutenant.”

“What is life anyway? Is it a bridge between thoughts and emotions? Is it a reflection of brilliant and foolish notions? Is it a system that provides methods to find roots? Is it a map of many illusions and absolute truths? What is life anyway? Is it a gate to worlds that are not yet known? Is it a farm where ideas are planted and grown? Is it a tiny seed that blooms into a beautiful rose? Is it a time capsule of experiences that you chose?”

“The individual is drawn by [at least] two forces. First, the spirits desire of uniting with all spirits. Second, a mixture of survival, fear and mainly ego. Each state or government consists [currently] of individuals who may or may not be aware of their own [inner] imbalance - which directly [influence] within and through most of our efforts. Moreover, the idea that machines are perfect and only humans make mistakes - who then, creates, the machines. If I am flawed and make mistakes, there is potential for voluntary or involuntary imperfections, exotic or not. Too much spirituality can lead to inaction, and inaction can lead to devastation, Cosmos is not entirely peaceful, she has her gradients too. Balance.”

“The individual is drawn by two forces. First, the spirits desire of uniting all spirits. Second, a mixture of survival, fear and mainly ego. Each state or government consists [currently] of individuals who may or may not be aware of their own [inner] imbalance - which directly [influence] within and through most of our efforts. Moreover, the idea that machines are perfect and only humans make mistakes - who then, creates, the machines. If I am flawed and make mistakes, there is potential for voluntary or involuntary imperfections, exotic or not. Too much spirituality can lead to inaction, and inaction can lead to devastation, our Cosmos is not entirely peaceful. Balance.”

“I know there are days when even one single positive thought feels like too much effort, but you must develop an unconditional love for life. You must never lose your childish curiosity for the possibilities in every single day. Who you can be, what you can see, what you can feel and where it can lead you. Be in love with your life, everything about it. The sadness and the joys, the struggles and the lessons, your flaws and strengths, what you lose and what you gain.”

“Nevertheless, there are many respects, in tiny and contemptible matters, where our curiosity is provoked every day. How often do we slip, who can count? How many times we initially act as if we put up with people telling idle tales in order not to offend the weak, but then gradually we find pleasure in listening. I now do not watch a dog chase a rabbit when this is happening at the circus. But if by chance I am passing when coursing occurs in the countryside, it distracts me perhaps indeed from thinking out some weighty matter. The hunt turns me to an interest in the sport, not enough to lead me to alter the direction of the beast I am riding, but shifting the inclination of my heart. Unless you had proved to me my infirmity and quickly admonished me either to take the sight as the start for some reflection enabling me to rise up to you or wholly to scorn and pass the matter by, I would be watching like an empty-headed fool. When I am sitting at home, a lizard catching flies or a spider entrapping them as they rush into its web often fascinates me. The problem is not made any different by the fact that the animals are small. The sight leads me on to praise you, the marvellous Creator and orderer of all things; but that was not how my attention first began. It is one thing to rise rapidly, another thing not to fall.”

“The source of love, as I learned later, is a curiosity which, combined with the inclination which nature is obliged to give us in order to preserve itself. […] Hence women make no mistake in taking such pains over their person and their clothing, for it is only by these that they can arouse a curiosity to read them in those whom nature at their birth declared worthy of something better than blindness. […] As time goes on a man who has loved many women, all of them beautiful, reaches the point of feeling curious about ugly women if they are new to him. He sees a painted woman. The paint is obvious to him, but it does not put him off. His passion, which has become a vice, is ready with the fraudulent title page. ‘It is quite possible,’ he tells himself, ‘that the book is not as bad as all that; indeed, it may have no need of this absurd artifice.’ He decides to scan it, he tries to turn over the pages—but no! the living book objects; it insists on being read properly, and the ‘egnomaniac’ becomes a victim of coquetry, the monstrous persecutor of all men who ply the trade of love. You, Sir, who are a man of intelligence and have read these least twenty lines, which Apollo drew from my pen, permit me to tell you that if they fail to disillusion you, you are lost—that is, you will be the victim of the fair sex to the last moment of your life. If that prospect pleases you, I congratulate you”

“Now, if you open the treasure chest of desire, what do you find there? What do all the desires have in common? You. Go ahead and stop here and test it for a few days if you are really serious about the question. After you get past the first thousand, you begin to enter into a subtle territory, known as the border between desire and yearning. Or, if you want, between answers and questions. The defining quality, or essence, of desire is that it is engaged as if it were an answer.”

“I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering, and like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt’ring eye and say, “Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?” The poor wretch flees. I am not making chatter; I mean to change his life.”

“When he had ended, the holy hermit was a moment silent, then said: "My son, I have attended to thy story and I know the maiden. I have myself seen her, as have many. Know, then, that she is capricious for she imposeth conditions that man cannot fulfill, and delinquency is punished by desertion. She cometh only when unsought, and will not be questioned. One manifestation of curiosity, one sign of doubt, one expression of misgiving, and she is away!”

“True strength. There is no conflict with vulnerability or humility. Indeed, vulnerability and humility are essential here, and ultimately what makes strength true. One does not don the mask of strength in response to fear, which is a con, like those crazy small reptiles that stand up on their hind legs and spread useless wings to intimidate as a last resort. You stand there in self-respect for Christ’s sake and take it with some courage, responding in accordance with your honest values, taking sincere responsibility for them. Stand up for who you truly are, not the image you would like to sell, nor shrink to fit into the false harmony around you.”

“Joey was lying by the stream one afternoon after a hard day. He had been in trouble at school because he had left his homework at home. He had done the work, but his teacher didn’t believe him that he had completed it. Joey was still a bit upset with his teacher. Suddenly, he heard a very soft voice say, “Hello.” Joey sat up and looked around, but he couldn’t see anyone. So, he laid back down by the stream only to hear the voice again. The voice sounded bubbly and a little like running water. Joey didn’t know where it was coming from.”

“Father had stretched out his long legs and was tilting back in his chair. Mother sat with her knees crossed, in blue slacks, smoking a Chesterfield. The dessert dishes were still on the table. My sisters were nowhere in evidence. It was a warm evening; the big dining-room windows gave onto blooming rhododendrons. Mother regarded me warmly. She gave me to understand that she was glad I had found what I had been looking for, but that she and father were happy to sit with their coffee, and would not be coming down. She did not say, but I understood at once, that they had their pursuits (coffee?) and I had mine. She did not say, but I began to understand then, that you do what you do out of your private passion for the thing itself. I had essentially been handed my own life. In subsequent years my parents would praise my drawings and poems, and supply me with books, art supplies, and sports equipment, and listen to my troubles and enthusiasms, and supervise my hours, and discuss and inform, but they would not get involved with my detective work, nor hear about my reading, nor inquire about my homework or term papers or exams, nor visit the salamanders I caught, nor listen to me play the piano, nor attend my field hockey games, nor fuss over my insect collection with me, or my poetry collection or stamp collection or rock collection. My days and nights were my own to plan and fill.”