Michel de Montaigne Quotes

The over curious are not over wise.

Curiosity ran unchecked through him, like the wind outside through the deserted streets, along the canal, around the little wooden houses, everywhere, as far as the mountain.

Wonder is retained by wise pondering.

The day that you stop looking - because you're content God did it - I don't need you in the lab. You're useless on the frontier of understanding the nature of the world.

I travel because I want to know. Books and documentaries will only get you so far. If you want to know, you will have to go.

Understanding is a kind of ecstasy

A great variety of reading confuses and does not teach. It makes the student like a man who dwells everywhere and, therefore, nowhere in particular.

I had discovered that learning something, no matter how complex, wasn't hard when I had a reason to want to know it.

The ability to embrace mystery is what attracts revelation.

Sometimes you find the panel, but it doesn’t open; sometimes it opens, and your gaze meets nothing but a mouse skeleton. But at least you’ve looked. That’s the real distinction between people: not between those who have secrets and those who don’t, but between those who want to know everything and those who don’t. This search is a sign of love I maintain.

If you don't understand, ask questions. If you're uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It's easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place. Then listen some more. Sometimes people just want to feel heard. Here's to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding.

One who never asks either knows everything or nothing.

As a child, I wanted to know how things worked and to control them. With a friend, I built a number of complicated models that I could control. It was a natural next step to want to know how the universe works.

We should do astronomy because it is beautiful and because it is fun. We should do it because people want to know. We want to know our place in the universe and how things happen.

Reading makes me want to write my own books, and just trying to understand what I see in the world around me makes me want to figure things out.

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end.

We have to be able to ask questions in order to answer them.

There is no key to open the heart of another - except curiosity.

Too much to know is to know naught but fame.

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself And falls on the other side

Awe is the beginning of wisdom. Awe is the beginning of education.

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, drifting throught the wind, wanting to start again. Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin, like a house of cards, one blow from caving in.

Why shouldn’t your curiosity about the world be rewarded?

If you have to ask, you’ll never know. If you know, you need only ask.

Our minds, bodies, feelings, relationships are all informed by our questions. What you ask is who you are. What you find depends on what you search for. And what shapes our lives are the questions we ask, refuse to ask, or never think of asking.