All men by nature desire to know.

ذلك شأن الرجال جميعاً .. إنهم يصرون على معرفة ما يزعجهم ويغضبهم. (مرغريت)

Les hommes ont la rage de vouloir apprendre ce qui doit leur faire de la peine.

To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad.

Men are not content with a simple life: they are acquisitive, ambitious, competitive, and jealous; they soon tire of what they have, and pine for what they have not; and they seldom desire anything unless it belongs to others.

Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinion about the things.

The only good thing for men therefore is to be diverted from thinking of what they are, either by some occupation which takes their mind off it, or by some novel and agreeable passion which keeps them busy, like gambling, hunting, some absorbing show, in short by what is called diversion...Thus men who are naturally conscious of what they are shun nothing so much as rest; they would do anything to be disturbed.
It is wrong then to blame them; they are not wrong to want excitement - if they only wanted it for the sake of diversion. The trouble is that they want it as though, once they had the things they seek, they could not fail to be truly happy. That is what justifies calling their search a vain one. All this shows that neither the critics nor the criticized understand man's real nature.
When men are reproached for pursuing so eagerly something that could never satisfy them, their proper answer, if they really thought about it, ought to be that they simply want a violent and vigorous occupation to take their minds off themselves, and that is why they choose some attractive object to entice them in ardent pursuit. Their opponents could find no answer to that.

The attack of a man, equipped with erudition, and of perfectly sober judgment, on cherished beliefs and revered institutions, must always excite the interest, by irritating the passions, of men.

What disturbs men's minds is not events but their judgements on events:

Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.

Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions

What drives men of genius is their obsession with the idea that what has already been done is not good enough.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.