“What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always hurdle self-interest? Or is it, more simply, that wanting to know the worst is love's favorite perversion.”

—  Julian Barnes

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always hurdle s…" by Julian Barnes?
Julian Barnes photo
Julian Barnes 77
English writer 1946

Related quotes

Prevale photo

“One of the worst categories of people is the one who always wants to being right knowing you don't have it.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Una delle peggiori categorie di individui è quella che vuole sempre aver ragione sapendo di non averla.
Source: prevale.net

Leo Tolstoy photo

“A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth — science — which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Bk. IX, ch. 10
War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)

“A great deal of what we know about reality is accompanied by little more interest than simple curiosity.”

Roger Haight (1936) American theologian

Source: Dynamics Of Theology, Chapter Eight, Symbolic Religious Communication, p. 147

Jodi Picoult photo

“What we all want, really, is to be loved. That craving drives our worst behavior.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Cassandra Clare photo

“Always ask for what you want, because the worst thing that can happen is embarrassment but the best thing that can happen is nudity.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

William Penn photo

“Time is what we want most, but what, alas! we use worst; and for which God will certainly most strictly reckon with us, when Time shall be no more.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

The Preface
Fruits of Solitude (1682)
Context: There is nothing of which we are apt to be so lavish as of Time, and about which we ought to be more solicitous; since without it we can do nothing in this World. Time is what we want most, but what, alas! we use worst; and for which God will certainly most strictly reckon with us, when Time shall be no more.

“Peter loves to make promises. He has the best intentions of keeping them. It makes it worse, somehow, that he doesn’t know how to. He thinks he’s a nice boy, that’s the worst part.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Robert Jordan photo

“Knowing serves no real purpose, but then, neither does not knowing. Myself, I always prefer knowing to not.”

Robert Jordan The Great Hunt

Source: The Great Hunt

Dan Fogelberg photo

“She says no
When she means yes
And what she wants
You know that I can't guess.
When we want more
You know we ask for less
Such is the language of love…”

Dan Fogelberg (1951–2007) singer-songwriter, musician

The Language of Love.
Song lyrics, Windows and Walls (1984)

Related topics