“You must spend every waking hour in mortal agony, for life is full of unanswerable questions.” carries the connotation that someone cannot answer large numbers of every day questions, not that they can’t answer a few questions in specialized areas.
In this case it illustrates how the character in question couldn’t really imagine living a life without unanswered questions. Given that it’s a Science Elf that fits.
“Unanswered questions” connotes different things in the two different places, though. In one place it connotes “all unanswered questions of whatever kind” and in another it connotes “important unanswered questions”. The “cleverness” of the quote relies on confusing the two.
Important depends on whether you care about something. If you have a scientific mindset than you care about a lot of questions and want answers for them.
In this case it illustrates how the character in question couldn’t really imagine living a life without unanswered questions. Given that it’s a Science Elf that fits.
For him daily life is about deep questions.
“Unanswered questions” connotes different things in the two different places, though. In one place it connotes “all unanswered questions of whatever kind” and in another it connotes “important unanswered questions”. The “cleverness” of the quote relies on confusing the two.
Important depends on whether you care about something. If you have a scientific mindset than you care about a lot of questions and want answers for them.
But you don’t care about the huge number of questions needed to make the response on target.