The over curious are not over wise. [ Massinger ]
What's a fine person, or a beauteous face,
Unless deportment gives them decent grace?
Blessed with all other requisites to please.
Some want the striking elegance of ease;
The curious eye their awkward movement tires:
They seem like puppets led about by wires. [ Churchill ]
Brook! whose society the poet seeks,
Intent his wasted spirits to renew;
And whom the curious painter doth pursue
Through rocky passes, among flowery creeks.
And tracks thee dancing down thy waterbreaks. [ Wordsworth ]
With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroyed by thought. [ Churchill ]
The most curious offspring of shame is shyness. [ Sydney Smith ]
Too curious man! why dost thou seek to know
Events, which, good or ill, foreknown, are woe!
The all-seeing power, that made thee mortal, gave
Thee every thing a mortal state should have. [ Dryden ]
Love should have some rest and pleasure in himself,
Not ever be too curious for a boon,
Too prurient for a proof against the grain
Of him ye say ye love. [ Alfred Tennyson ]
The robe which curious Nature weaves to hang upon the head. [ Decker ]
The curious questioning eye, that plucks the heart of every mystery. [ Grenville Mellen ]
Men marry because they are tired, women because they are curious; both are disappointed. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
People of a lively imagination are generally curious, and always so when a little in love. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Half-uttered praise is to the curious mind, as to the eye half-veiled beauty is, more precious than the whole. [ Joanna Baillie ]
The history of the thoughts of men, curious on account of their infinite variety, is also sometimes instructive. [ Fontanelle ]
The heavens and the earth, the woods and the wayside, teem with instruction and knowledge to the curious and thoughtful. [ Hosea Ballou ]
The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body. [ Bacon ]
Calumny is a vice of curious constitution; trying to kill it keeps it alive; leave it to itself and it will die a natural death. [ Thomas Paine ]
Under the veil of these curious sentences are hid those germs of morals which the masters of philosophy have afterwards developed into so many volumes. [ Plutarch ]
It is a curious thing about the game of marriage - a game, by the way, that is going out of fashion - the wives hold all the honors and invariably lose the odd trick. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]
A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of the bees, will often be stung for his curiosity. [ Pope ]
It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is, and what shifts we make to escape thinking. There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds. [ Lowell ]
Art thou beautiful? Live, then, in accordance with the curious work and frame of the creation, and let the beauty of thy person teach thee to beautify thy mind with holiness, the ornament of the beloved of God. [ Penn ]
The mind should be accustomed to make wise reflections, and draw curious conclusions as it goes along; the habitude of which made Pliny the Younger affirm that he never read a book so bad but he drew some profit from it [ Sterne ]
What a curious workmanship is that of the eye, which is in the body, as the sun in the world; set in the head as in a watch-tower, having the softest nerves for receiving the greater multitude of spirits necessary for the act of vision! [ Charnock ]
Let your sleep be necessary and healthful, not idle and expensive of time, beyond the needs and conveniences of nature; and sometimes be curious to see the preparation which the sun makes when he is coming forth from his chambers of the east. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
It is curious for one who studies the action and reaction of national literature on each other, to see the humor of Swift and Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, reappear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be, to the English mind. [ Lowell ]
What profusion is there in His work! When trees blossom there is not a single breastpin, but a whole bosom full of gems; and of leaves they have so many suits that they can throw them away to the winds all summer long. What unnumbered cathedrals has He reared in the forest shades, vast and grand, full of curious carvings, and haunted evermore by tremulous music; and in the heavens above, how do stars seem to have flown out of His hand faster than sparks out of a mighty forge! [ Beecher ]