Eccentric

“ And what better apology could we desire for our eccentric rambles through every grade of Bath society? with us every set has its attractions, and I have known my friend Transit cut a nobleman and half a dozen honourables for the delightful gratification of enjoying the eccentricities of a beggars' club, and being enabled to sketch from the life the varied exhibition of passion and character which such a meeting would afford him. ”

“ He should have blamed Adams for being born in Boston. The mind resorts to reason for want of training, and Adams had never met a perfectly trained mind.
To La Farge, eccentricity meant convention; a mind really eccentric never betrayed it. True eccentricity was a tone--a shade--a nuance--and the finer the tone, the truer the eccentricity. Of course all artists hold more or less the same point of view in their art, but few carry it into daily life, and often the contrast is excessive between their art and their talk. ”

“ I heard of one man, clever but eccentric, who became so exasperated at seeing the volumes in every body's hand, and hearing them in every body's mouth, that he conceived a sort of personal enmity to them, impiously dissenting from their conclusions and questioning their premises. ”

“ I knew from experience that eccentric characters such as yours suffer cruelly from the isolation to which they condemn themselves; for these proud, sensitive, and easily offended natures can not readily assimilate themselves with the rest of mankind,—they are constantly being wounded or taking offence, and they instinctively create for themselves a solitude in the midst of society. ”

“ With a hundred fine notions chasing one another hourly in his fancy, he is startled at the least approach to the romantic in others; and, determined by his own sense in every thing, commends you to the guidance of common sense on all occasions.—With a touch of the eccentric in all which he does, or says, he is only anxious that you should not commit yourself by doing any thing absurd or singular. On my once letting slip at table, that I was not fond of a certain popular dish, he begged me at any rate not to say so—for the world would think me mad. ”

“ Where they were faithful to tradition they well expressed their own eccentricity; and where they were eccentric they were most conventional, How the times made us change! We trust too much in words; how we assert and deny when a question comes forth! And like an amateur, we walk upon to Life’s stage most ungracefully, often forget our lines ”

“ And here, at the outset, without quite endorsing the maxim that genius is always eccentric, let it be confessed that a slight deviation from the beaten track is generally apt to be interesting. When we see the photograph of some distinguished artist, musician, or poet, and find the features very like those of the pork butcher in the next street, or the footman over the way, we are conscious of a feeling of disappointment almost amounting to a personal grievance. ”

“ Outward circumstances form the centripetal force, which keeps us in ours. Let the eccentric will fly off at ever so wide a tangent for a time, back it must come to a regular diurnal path, or wander away into the "blackness of darkness." ”

“ Everything is possible for an eccentric, especially when he is English. ”

“ Men in such a position can afford to be as eccentric as they like, even to the wearing of Carnivalesque garments, burying their friends or relations in a park, and shaking their heads over such names as Smith or Shakespeare. ”

“ If it is eccentricity to be very much better than other men, he is certainly eccentric; and fanatical too, if it is fanatical to renounce all small selfish motives for the sake of a great and unselfish one. ”

“ The most eccentric in opinion or conduct is, we may be sure, supported by the agreement of a class, the smallness of which accounts for his apparent eccentricity, and the preciousness of which accounts for his fortitude in defying general opinion. Again, anything which tends to emphasize difference from the herd is unpleasant. In the individual mind there will be an unanalysable dislike of the novel in action or thought. ”

“ What the eccentric man by his side had been saying, more to himself than to be heard, in an almost elegiac tone, which contrasted strikingly with his ordinarily sharp, strident voice--it was his own thoughts, which he had had often and often, from early boyhood up, so that he was almost frightened by the close resemblance of his Double. ”

“ I want to wait for just the moment to spring it on them.”
“Couldn’t you invite me in when that moment comes?”
“We’ll see. I may invite the neighbours in, and crown myself with a laurel wreath.”
“I’d rely on your doing it in a novel way.”
“The surest way of being considered eccentric is just to be yourself. ”

“ Your eccentric man par excellence is your perfectly conventional man, who never offends in the slightest way by any original action or thought. For he has yielded to every variety of pressure that has been brought to bear upon him, and his original nature has been completely obscured. ”

“ Among the people, vigor of mind broke out into numerous eccentricities; or, rather, the preoccupied citizen, acting naturally and independently, not thinking wholly of himself, his dress, and manner, claiming for himself the utmost freedom, eating, sleeping, walking, speaking as best pleased him, threw aside some of the eccentricities of fashion, and in so doing to the unenfranchised appeared eccentric. ”

“ Men do the same. The more curious these actions are, the more eccentric the individual becomes. You remember Zena warned us that we had to do with an eccentric in this affair, and therefore was inclined to believe in the existence of a will. ”

“ That is, always provided the originality wears a certain conventional garb: if you would conquer the world, you must blind and humor it by donning its own portable envelope. Do you understand what I mean, my dear? You must not startle people by doing eccentric things; you must not get the reputation of being a poseuse—it is vulgar and tiresome. You must simply be quietly different from everybody else. There is a fine but decided line, my dear girl, between eccentricity and individuality, and you must keep your lorgnette upon it. ”

“ The pressure of want—whatever might be the case with the other force—was, however, presumably not active now, for the tokens of a chastened ease, after all, still abounded, many marks of a taste whose discriminations might perhaps have been called eccentric. ”

“ The fact is, we find it hard to distinguish between genius and eccentricity. The uncontrolled eccentricities of the matured do so much harm, that it is found necessary to suppress them. But we should remember that the genius is always eccentric in youth unless he is allowed a very wide area for development—and this is the last service his friends are willing to do him. ”

“ He had that incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturbations of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for social conventions, that seduces or exasperates them. ”

“ But eccentricity in Art aims, first and last, at sensible effect; to appease an eager, prurient curiosity is its proper motive-spring; and it is radically touched with some disease, perhaps an itch of moral or intellectual or emotional demonstrativeness; and so it naturally issues in a certain plurisy of style, or some self-pleasing crotchet or specialty of expression,—something which is striking and emphatic, and which is therefore essentially disproportionate and false. ”

“ Eccentric is off or aside from the center, and so off or aside from the ordinary and what is considered the normal course; as, genius is commonly eccentric. Eccentric is a higher and more respectful word than odd or queer. Erratic signifies wandering, a stronger and more censorious term than eccentric. Queer is transverse or oblique, aside from the common in a way that is comical or perhaps slightly ridiculous. Quaint denotes that which is pleasingly odd and fanciful, often with something of the antique ”

“ Character often becomes neutralized, and genius itself dulled and flattened, where to distinguish one’s self is felt to be an impropriety, and where the manifestation of decided thought or feeling would be eccentric, and even rude. ”

“ Unless a person is naturally eccentric, the attempt to be so demoralises him, because there is nothing so demoralising as failure—except on one's own particular lines. Did you, for instance, jump on a horse and career barebacked through Menlo Park like a wild Indian,—a performance which your friend would probably carry off with any amount of dash and chic—you would feel a hopeless fool ”

“ Was he joking, or did he speak seriously? Was it, indeed true, that he went with the “Great Eastern” in all her voyages, to be present at some catastrophe? Every thing is possible for an eccentric, especially when he is English. ”

“ To our mind, the idiosyncrasies of such a creature as this deserve the most attentive study. Who knows whether we might not find in the world of eccentric instinct all sorts of anticipations of eccentric intellect? ”

“ But besides those characters who are actually dangerous to society, a well-frequented watering-place generally exhibits for the amusement of the company, and the perplexity and amazement of the more inexperienced, a sprinkling of persons called by the newspapers eccentric characters—individuals, namely, who, either from some real derangement of their understanding, or, much more frequently, from an excess of vanity, are ambitious of distinguishing themselves by some striking peculiarity in dress or address, conversation or manners, and perhaps in all. ”

“ The actions of the noble-minded of70 this earth are often mysteries to its more humble inhabitants. But Conscia mens recti may do these things and prosper.
To arrest public attention, man must be eccentric, but even greatness has its penalties, and of these the discomfort attendant on eccentricity is by no means one of the least. ”

“ Only contrive to obtain the character of an eccentric, and you may ride the free horse round the circle of your acquaintance for the remainder of your life. If my readers are not by this time fully satisfied of my peculiar claims to the appellation of an oddity, I have no hopes of obtaining pardon for the past whims and fancies of a volatile muse, or anticipating patronage for the future wanderings of a restless and inquisitive humorist. ”

“ Like most practical men, I have a positive horror of appearing queer. I shun eccentricity in dress as assiduously as I shun eccentricity in manners. I sometimes envy poets and artists, not for their poetry or their art, but for that sublime egotism which enables them to take pleasure in making themselves ridiculous. ”

“ I know not where any personal eccentricity is so freely allowed, and no man gives himself any concern with it. An Englishman walks in a pouring rain, swinging his closed umbrella like a walking-stick; wears a wig, or a shawl, or a saddle, or stands on his head, and no remark is made. ”

“ There is all the difference in the world between departure from recognized rules by one who has learned to obey them, and neglect of them through want of training or want of skill or want of understanding. Before you can be eccentric you must know where the circle is. ”

“ Another adventurer, a bachelor, by the name of M——, affects the eccentric, and, as the day approaches for the handing in of his bill, his eccentricity verges upon madness, till at last, when the document is really tendered, he becomes absolutely crazy—shouts, sings, performs in an antic manner, and declares himself to be the king of the Jews, the President of the United States, or something of that sort. ”

“ He was manly and natural,—free and off-handed to the verge of eccentricity. Independence and marked character seemed to breathe from the little, rather bowed figure, crowned with a lion-like head and falling light hair,—to glow in the keen, eager, blue eyes glancing on either side as he walked along. Nothing could be less commonplace, nothing less conventional, than his appearance in a room or in the streets. ”

“ Some years ago an eccentric man, when this expression was used to him, was known occasionally to interpret the words in their literal sense, and in more than one instance he had the credit of having adroitly made his court to a lady in that manner. ”

“ We believe that whoever will number up his reforming and rationalist acquaintances, will find among them more than the usual proportion of those who in dress or behaviour exhibit some degree of what the world calls eccentricity. ”

“ When an engine has two eccentrics, so as to enable the engine to run in either direction, as in the case of a locomotive, it is necessary to consider which eccentric is to be set for the forward, and which for the backward motion. In American locomotive practice it is usual to let the eccentric nearest to the wheel, and, therefore, the most difficult to get at, be for the backward motion, which is the least used, and therefore the least liable to get loose upon the axle. ”

“ In this way, for instance, he is killing off the chough in Cornwall, the Bath white butterfly, the Queen of Spain Fritillary; and can plume himself upon the extermination of the Great Auk, and a hundred other rare birds and plants and insects. All that is the work of the collector and his glory alone. In the name of Science. And this is right and as it should be; eccentricity, in fact, is immorality—think over it again if you do not think so now—just as eccentricity in one's way of thinking is madness (I defy you to find another definition that will fit all the cases of either) ”

“ There are odd corners in the brains of most of us, filled with queer fancies which are as well kept out of sight; eccentricities, I suppose they may be called. The man who is so ‘concentric’ as to be innocent of peculiarities is a companion of a dull sort. But Heaven help us all when such things may be called, and treated as, madness. ”

“ Of his eccentricity I heard much more than of his benevolence, his invincible courage, his enthusiasm, his perseverance; but perhaps, according to the worldly nomenclature, these qualities come under the general head of 'eccentricity,' when devotion to a favourite object cannot possibly be referred to self-interest. ”