Unconventionality

“ It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set. It affords you then an inordinate amount of self-esteem. You have the self-satisfaction of courage without the inconvenience of danger. ”

“ Those rebels who make unconventionality their only convention, with their distrust of duty because they see no reason to be dutiful, and their philosophic nihilism, which comes to this, that all things having been proved false except their own desires, their desires become a philosophy, those anti-Puritans, as one sees them, especially in plays and on the stage, are an obstreperous, denying folk that seldom know their own minds to the end of the story. ”

“ When we take an introspective view of our sane personality, we shudder to see how near it is to the borderlands of insanity and the bizarre and eccentric world of crankdom. There hardly lives a man who does not possess some eccentricity, or who does not cherish, hidden, perhaps, deep within himself, some small delusion, which he is ashamed to acknowledge to the outside world. Social relations and the iron rules of custom hold in place the balance-wheel of many a disordered mind. ”

“ Perhaps her hatred of convention, trammelling the frankness of her own impulses, had rendered her more alert to perceive what is intrinsically great and profound within the forms of human folly, so simple and so infinitely varied according to the region of the earth and to the moment of time. ”

“ Alas! are there so few things in the world, about us, most unnatural, and yet most natural in being so? Hear the magistrate or judge admonish the unnatural outcasts of society; unnatural in brutal habits, unnatural in want of decency, unnatural in losing and confounding all distinctions between good and evil; unnatural in ignorance, in vice, in recklessness, in contumacy, in mind, in looks, in everything. ”

“ Such an attitude of mind, however, is significant, not so much of a reverence for the Unknown Cause, as of an irreverence for those omnipresent forms in which the Unknown Cause is manifested to us. Men who have not risen above that vulgar conception which unites with Matter the contemptuous epithets “gross” and “brute,” may naturally enough feel dismay at the proposal to reduce the phenomena of Life, of Mind, and of Society, to a level with those which they think so degraded. ”

“ In the unconventional life now in prospect he could see her daily and permit his interest to be dissipated or deepened, as the case might be, while he remained, in the strictest sense of the world, uncommitted. ”

“ But all this is so absolutely inconceivable to the human imagination, not to speak of human reason, that only insane people can be supposed to entertain it. The means by which the establishment of this social condition is to be accomplished are equally inexplicable as to their adaptation to the ulterior purpose. We have to draw our conclusions from things which have actually happened. ”

“ To begin with, he hadn't in the least found out what men wanted or why they wanted it—all his classification had been like pressing wild-flowers and sticking them in a herbarium with the right Latin name tacked on—it cleared up some of the clutter, perhaps, but it left you mighty far from understanding life. All that he had learned from his classification was that men wanted a lot of contradictory things, and what one man would sell his soul to get, would break another one's heart to have. ”

“ Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. ”

“ For crude classifications and false generalisations are the curse of all organised human life. ”

“ Mal-organized, miseducated, the imperfect infant taken from his cradle, and every imperfection developed by the haphazard social culture, and all else undeveloped; you have him at last, what he is—at once the product and the victim of a half-barbarous state of society. ”

“ But "Why should I not do something else instead?" meets, in the primitive society, with the invariable answer, "Because, if you do, something awful will happen to us all." What precise shape the ill-luck will take need not be specified. The suggestion rather gains than loses by the indefiniteness of its appeal to the imagination. ”

“ Could we, without being morbidly anxious, keep watch over ourselves as to what operates favourably or unfavourably upon us in our complicated civil and social life, and would we leave off what is actually pleasant to us as an enjoyment, for the sake of the evil consequences, we should thus know how to remove with ease many an inconvenience which, with a constitution otherwise sound, often troubles us more than even a disease. ”

“ Then you succeed perfectly in being what you wish! Don't you know, monsieur, that to set yourself against conventionalities is like talking too loud?—an impertinence and an under-breeding that society resents by exclusion. ”

“ For one person who, being a person of genius, has been injured by what is called conventionality—I do not, of course, mean foolish conformity to what is absurd—thousands have been saved by it, and self-separation means mischief. ”

“ We can put up with the improbable in invention, because the improbable is always happening in life, but we cannot tolerate the so-called psychological juggling with the human mind, the perversion of the laws of the mind, the forcing of character to fit the eccentricities of plot. Whatever excursions the writer makes in fancy, we require fundamental consistency with human nature. And this is the reason why psychological studies of the abnormal, or biographies of criminal lunatics, are only interesting to pathologists and never become classics in literature. ”

“ What is the meaning of unconventional morality? And why unconventional? Is morality so vague a term that there can be any sort of doubt as to its real meaning? And is Una any the less moral because she chooses to be unconventional? Una! I'd stake my life on her morality and innate refinement. No girl sacrifices her youth in the interests of others less fortunate than herself without being fine clear through. Then what did Marcia mean? ”

“ He’ll try again for the common with what he’ll believe to be a still more infernal cunning, and again the common will fatally elude him, for his infernal cunning will have been only his genius in an ineffectual disguise. ”

“ The common reason of society can check the aberrations of individual eccentricity only by acting on the individual reason; and it will do so in the main sufficiently, if left to this natural operation. ”

“ Assert yourself to be unalterable, and you assert yourself a fatalist. Assert yourself a fatalist, and you free yourself from all moral responsibility—and other people, too. Well, then, act up to your convictions, if convictions they are. If you can't alter yourself, I can't alter myself, and supposing that I come along and bash you on the head and steal your purse, you can't blame me. ”

“ We have supposed ourselves to have overcome these primitive impulses, but we are far from being so civilized as we thought. The evil impulses, as we call them, which we supposed had at least been transformed are changed only in the sense that they have been influenced by the erotic motive, or have been repressed by an outer restraint, an educational factor, the demands of what we call civilized environment. But let us not deceive ourselves; the old impulses are still alive; the number of people who have been transformed by civilization is less than we supposed. ”

“ You will have substituted a system of contention and difference warring against the laws of nature herself, and attempting by these new fangled, petty, puny, and most contemptible contrivances, organized in defiance of the best lessons of human experience, to confuse, impede, and disarrange the palpable will of the Creator of the world. ”

“ From the light of this morning’s example I can realize, in view of the past, that inconsistency is the soul of instinctive selfishness, as well as the ‘substance’ of law and gospel, upon which we found our vaunted civilization. In addition, your system of education founded upon the practical adaptation of study to the requirements of life, makes me feel that I have used my brain as a store-house for the vile and useless lumber of past ages, which had better have been buried in the instinctive grave of oblivion. ”

“ The covetousness or the malignity which saddens me when I ascribe it to society, is my own. ”

“ What do you tell me of the common People for, who are the worst Examples in the World that can be follow'd. What have I to do with Custom, that is the Mistress of all evil Practices? We ought to accustom ourselves to the best Things: And by that Means, that which was uncustomary would become habitual, and that which was unpleasant would become pleasant ”

“ An instinctive and inbred unwillingness to accept the accepted and conform to the conventional was of the essence of his character, whether in life or art, and was a source to him both of strength and weakness. ”

“ But who can hope successfully to establish the line of demarcation that shall separate the legitimate sphere of their applicability from that in which they cannot properly claim a place? We know how much we are all under the dominion of habit in regard to the artificial observances of life, and that once established, any practice in which we indulge ourselves may manifest itself unconsciously to us. ”

“ The obvious is not of necessity the normal; fashion rules and deforms; the majority fall tamely into the contemporary shape, and thus attain, in the eyes of the true observer, only a higher power of insignificance; and the danger is lest, in seeking to draw the normal, a man should draw the null, and write the novel of society instead of the romance of man. ”

“ To one who is imperfect, unstable, passionate, and revengeful? To a being who has, in fact, no uniformity of conduct, no system of action, and no immutability of procedure? No! Those who place their confidence here must be wretchedly disappointed, and an agitated mind will be their unavoidable portion. ”

“ It is only in obedience to the most general, practical demand for a superficial view that we classify, make sharp divisions, pick out a single tune from the continuous melody of nature. But the old conceptions of the mind, like the customs of primitive commerce, become foolish in a new age. ”

“ No obligation whatever rests on us in respect to a given kind—much light as our choice may often throw for the critic on the nature of our own intelligence. There at any rate, we are disposed to say of such a piece of penetration as “L’Innocente,” there is a particular dreadful adventure, as large as life, for those who can bear it. ”

“ The theory, if applied to past as well as to present times, would involve us in some startling contradictions, for there is hardly any act, habit, or custom which has not been held meritorious and commendable in one state of society, and detestable and evil in some other. ”

“ Delawarr whom I hear say, that consistency is a prejudice and conduct to be ruled by convenience? Opinions may change with the circumstances on which they were founded, but principles never. Either your whole past life has been a lie, or else your present conduct. The high and warm feelings your youth, matured by the convictions of manhood—all that a whole life has held to be right—cannot, surely, in the experience of a few days, be utterly wrong. ”

“ At the age at which life takes its direction, I contracted an inclination for the exact and natural sciences which I would permit myself to describe as irresistible, and a disgust for practical life which I would call unconquerable, if I had not overcome both this disgust and this inclination. It is fate that disposes of individuals, and their qualities as well as their defects decide upon their careers. ”

“ This is true of what we call a bizarre mixture of incongruent elements in mode of attire or in manners; for it is experience and the habits of social life which dispose our minds to regard them as foreign one to the other. Much of our mirthful gratification at exhibitions of the incongruous arises through a perception of the intrusion of something foreign into a situation. ”

“ That cause is the vanity which, seemingly inherent in the human mind, makes each successive generation maintain that, "whatever I do, whatever I think, and whatever I say, must be right and proper." Hence the present always looks back upon the past with contempt, and forward to the future with doubt as to whether it will not be degenerate. ”

“ Every system of an inferior kind, will be found inadequate in its application, and unsatisfactory in its sanctions--calculated, it may be, to amuse the philosopher in his closet, and attract the admiration of young and inexperienced minds, but too weak to sustain the shock of human passions, and too circumscribed to reach the heights of human hopes and fears. ”

“ It is bad enough to be hemmed in by the wretched conventionalities which prevent my doing openly what I conceive to be my duty, without adding to the restrictions that actually exist the imaginary one that I must not even think of the misery, the wretchedness, the sordid vice which abound just across the borders of the comfortable little world in which I live. ”

“ Even history is brought back to its origin from savagery; and its explanation is sought in its beginnings and not in its ends; the aspirations of the soul are supposed to be explained in their totality when biological and psychological names are given them; enthusiasm and conviction, which leave the level of the daily rut and the conventionalities of society, are branded as signs of shallowness and even of insanity. ”

“ But that is where human inconsistency comes in, and where human inconsistency is the issue none of us can afford to be hypercritical, because here, as in love, money making, and the desire to get ahead of our neighbors, we are all in the same class. ”