"I feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgement. You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden, and the family have to change their name. No, sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask."

Inquiry, Question, Judgment, Curiosity, Truth

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"I feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgement. You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden, and the family have to change their name. No, sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask."

Exlpore more Inquiry quotes

"The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true."

Alain de Botton, English Writer

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"Is Virgin you trying to fathom me."

Jack Kerouac, American Novelist

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"What does that quote mean to you? Can you explain the concept behind it and not just repeat the pretty phrase to me?"

S. A. Tawks, British Author

Inquiry, Meaning, Understanding, Thought, Interpretation

"It isn't what you don't know that's the problem. It is what you're unwilling to ask."

Mensah Oteh, Nigerian Author

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"A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious subjects are in disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of consciousness, the workings of the brain, the origin of aggression, the origin of language, the origin of life on earth, SETI and life on other worlds...this is all great stuff. Wonderful stuff. You can argue it interminably. But it can't be contradicted, because nobody knows the answer to any of these topics."

Michael Crichton, American Author

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"Carter and Helene still ask questions. I used to ask questions, and I got the answer: nothing. The answer is 'nothing."

Joan Didion, American Author

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"Ask questions. The secrets of life are hidden in questions, so ask wisely."

Mensah Oteh, Nigerian Author

Inquiry, Question, Curiosity, Life, Truth

"It is impossible to examine questions we refuse to ask."

Chuck Klosterman, American Critic

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"One of the greatest tragedies I can think of is for a person to die having never fully questioned the life he was born into."

Dan Pearce, American Author

Inquiry, Conformity, Awakening, Life, Reflection

"Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final."

Tom Stoppard, English Dramatist

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Explore more quotes by Robert Louis Stevenson

"Once you are married, there is nothing left for you, not even suicide."

Nothing

"We must accept life for what it actually is - a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature."

Life

"An aspiration is a joy forever a possession as solid as a landed estate a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity."

Happiness

"To be feared of a thing and yet to do it, is what makes the prettiest kind of a man."

Morality

"The cruellest lies are often told in silence."

Honesty

"You can read Kant by yourself, if you wanted to; but you must share a joke with someone else."

Reading

"There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbors good. One person I have to make good: Myself. But my duty to my neighbor is much more nearly expressed by saying that I have to make him happy if I may."

People

"The rain is falling all around,It falls on field and tree,It rains on the umbrellas here,And on the ships at sea."

Nature

"Talk is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money, it is all profit, it completes our education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health."

Age

"Literature, although it stands apart by reason of the great destiny and general use of its medium in the affairs of men, is yet an art like other arts. Of these we may distinguish two great classes: those arts, like sculpture, painting, acting, which are representative, or as used to be said very clumsily, imitative; and those, like architecture, music, and the dance, which are self-sufficient, and merely presentative."

Art