Eccentricity Quotes - Page 4

• Robert Scott Leyse channels Baudelaire's Queen of Spades and Jack of Hearts, speaking darkly of dead loves, in this new book. He also reminds me of James Purdy's notorious eccentricity. There's plenty of middlebrow stuff if you want it. Self-Murder isn't that.

  Kris Saknussemm

  Queens, Book, Heart

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• I seem to have the blind self-acceptance of the eccentric who can't conceive that his eccentricities are not clearly understood.

  Saul Bellow

  Acceptance, Self, Eccentric

  Saul Bellow, Gloria L. Cronin, Ben Siegel (1994). “Conversations with Saul Bellow”, p.67, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• This profusion of eccentricities, this dream in masonry and living rock is not a drop scene in a theatre, but a city in the world of reality.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Dream, Reality, Rocks

  Robert Louis Stevenson (1999). “The Lantern-Bearers and Other Essays”, p.91, Cooper Square Press

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• Eccentricities of genius.

  Charles Dickens

  Genius

  Pickwick Papers ch. 30 (1837)

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• My eccentricity became direction.

  Jean Paul Gaultier

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• When the purge of teacher individualism is unrestrained, eccentricity, initiative and individuality become the casualties.

  Andy Hargreaves

  Leadership, Teacher, Learning

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• Never imitate the eccentricities of genius, but toil after it in its truer flights. They are not so easy to follow, but they lead to higher regions.

  Charles Dickens

  Toil, Genius, Flight

  Charles Dickens, Jenny Hartley (2012). “The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens”, p.71, Oxford University Press

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• Habit is a compromise effected between the individual and his environment, or between the individual and his own organic eccentricities, the guarantee of a dull inviolability, the lightning-conductor of his existence.

  Samuel Beckett

  Lightning, Guarantees, Dull

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• ...Haller's sickness of the soul, as I now know, is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but the sickness of the times themselves, the neurosis of that generation to which Haller belongs, a sickness, it seems, that by no means attacks the weak and worthless only but, rather, precisely those who are strongest in spirit and richest in gifts.

  Hermann Hesse

  Mean, Soul, Generations

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “Steppenwolf: A Novel”, p.21, Macmillan

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• There are the those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behaviour and claim originality according to the fashionable eccentricities of their time. They claim brains or talent or indifference to mores in desperate attempts to deny their own mediocrity.

  Katherine Dunn

  Brain, Behaviour, Mediocrity

  FaceBook post by Katherine Dunn from Jan 29, 2012

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• At least Manhattan, in terms of danger and eccentricity, is much more of a theme park now. You couldn't really shoot the old Law & Order in New York today. It's a different city.

  Chris Noth

  New York, Order, Law

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• Writing down your thoughts is both necessary and harmful. It leads to eccentricity, narcissism, preserves what should be let go. On the other hand, these notes intensify the inner life, which, left unexpressed, slips through your fingers. If only I could find a better kind of journal, humbler, one that would preserve the same thoughts, the same flesh of life, which is worth saving.

  Anna Kamienska

  Letting Go, Writing, Hands

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• It doesn't matter if I'm only to be gone four days, as in this case; I take six months' supply of reading material everywhere. Anyone who needs further explication of this eccentricity can find it usefully set out in the first pages of W. Somerset Maugham's story "The Book-Bag.

  Robin McKinley

  Book, Reading, Needs

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• ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Fool, Incapacity, Distinction

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.51, 谷月社

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• The Man Who Never Was,' by Ewen Montagu, remains the best book about wartime espionage written by an active participant - incomplete, and dry in parts, it nonetheless summons up the ingenuity and sheer eccentricity of those who played this strange and dangerous game.

  Ben Macintyre

  Book, Men, Games

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• Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does: otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we're just stuck with what we've got. We're on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn't it? And also - if this isn't too grand a word - our tragedy.

  Julian Barnes

  Attitude, Character, Tragedy

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• No to spectacle no to virtuosity no to transformations and magic and make believe no to glamour and transcendency of the star image no to the heroic no to the anti-heroic no to trash imagery no to involvement of performer or spectator no to style no to camp no to seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer no to eccentricity no to moving or being moved.

  Yvonne Rainer

  Stars, Believe, Moving

  Yvonne Rainer (1999). “A Woman Who--: Essays, Interviews, Scripts”, p.16, JHU Press

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• Pop music can somehow survive being inhibited and mangled by its harsh and stupid commercial chains, and there is surely irreducible potential because of the 'star system' and the volatile attention pop receives for multiples of wickedness, ridicule, discontent, eccentricity, desire to thrive importantly in a genuinely popular context.

  Paul Morley

  Stars, Stupid, Desire

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• There is such a thing as genius, and these are people who do not have a formal disability, DSM-IV-type. They may have liberal eccentricities or quirks in their personality, but they don't rise to the level of a disability.

  Darold Treffert

  People, Personality, Genius

  "Conversations on Creativity with Darold Treffert, Part I: De". Interview with Scott Barry Kaufman, www.psychologytoday.com. April 11, 2011.

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• Whenever I wore it there were some questions whether the outfit was just too over the top. I'm like, "Do you know who you're dealing with here, and her eccentricities, her style, her flair?" These little things were sometimes those - I love it. I love having a real-life model. But I also do flush it out with my own personal experiences and my own essence, and hopefully they mesh together.

  Vera Farmiga

  Real, Essence, Style

  "Vera Farmiga and Paranormal Investigator Lorraine Warren Talk THE CONJURING, the Nature of Evil, Their Relationship, and More". Interview with Steve 'Frosty' Weintarub, collider.com. July 17, 2013.

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• There's not much room for eccentricity in Hollywood, and eccentricity is what's sexy in people.

  Rachel Weisz

  Sexy, People, Hollywood

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Those whose abilities or knowledge incline them most to deviate from the general round of life are recalled from eccentricity by the laws of their existence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Law, Humanity, Existence

  Samuel Johnson (1848). “The Wisdom of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler”, p.396

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• I basically think that I'm a fairly nice, normal person with just a few eccentricities.

  Heather Graham

  Nice, Thinking, Normal

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• In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric.

  John Stuart Mill

  Order, Break Through, People

  John Stuart Mill (1989). “J. S. Mill: 'On Liberty' and Other Writings”, p.67, Cambridge University Press

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• The good thing about New Orleans is that, overall, it's an accepting place. It's accepting of eccentricity, it's accepting of excess, it's accepting of color, in the sense of culture, not necessarily in the sense of race.

  Christopher Rice

  New Orleans, Race, Color

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