"Look at me, left here in the cold.
No, stupid girl, I really tried to warn her."
No, stupid girl, I really tried to warn her."
— Carly Rae Jepsen, "Curiosity"
"Curiosity is not a sin. But we should exercise caution with our curiosity yes, indeed."
— Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
"Curiosity killed the cat."
— Some old adage
"...But satisfaction brought him back."
— Lesser-known rejoinder to the above adage
"A mind without purpose will wander in dark places"
—Thought for the Day, Warhammer 40,000
By this may more evidently be discerned, wherein pleasure and wherein curiosity is the object of the senses; for pleasure seeketh objects beautiful, melodious, fragrant, savoury, soft; but curiosity, for trial's sake, the contrary as well, not for the sake of suffering annoyance, but out of the lust of making trial and knowing them. For what pleasure hath it, to see in a mangled carcase what will make you shudder? and yet if it be lying near, they flock thither, to be made sad, and to turn pale. Even in sleep they are afraid to see it. As if when awake, any one forced them to see it, or any report of its beauty drew them thither! Thus also in the other senses, which it were long to go through. From this disease of curiosity are all those strange sights exhibited in the theatre. Hence men go on to search out the hidden powers of nature (which is besides our end), which to know profits not, and wherein men desire nothing but to know.
—Augustine of Hippo, Confessions Book 10, Chapter 35
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either Go Mad from the Revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
