C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Inquisitiveness
Inquisitiveness is an uncomely guest.
Few men are raised in our estimation by being too closely examined.
Shun the inquisitive person, for he is also a talker.
Our inquisitive disposition is excited by having its gratification deferred.
An inquisitive man is a creature naturally very vacant of thought itself, and therefore forced to apply itself to foreign assistance.
Inquisitive people are the funnels of conversation; they do not take in anything for their own use, but merely to pass it to another.
Inquisitiveness or curiosity is a kernel of the forbidden fruit, which still sticketh in the throat of a natural man, and sometimes to the danger of his choking.
In ancient days the most celebrated precept was, “Know thyself;” in modern times it has been supplanted by the more fashionable maxim, “Know thy neighbor, and everything about him.”
Shun the inquisitive, for thou wilt be sure to find him leaky; open ears do not keep conscientiously what has been intrusted to them, and a word once spoken flies never to be recalled.