Quotes about eccentricity

The world thinks eccentricity in great things is genius, but in small things, only crazy.

— Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Only the other day I was inquiring of an entire bed of old-fashioned roses, forced to listen to my ramblings on the meaning of the universe as I sat cross-legged in the lotus position in front of them.

— Prince Of Wales Charles

Thou strange piece of wild nature!

— Colley Cibber

The English like eccentrics. They just don't like them living next door.

— Julian Clary

People of uncommon abilities generally fall into eccentricities when their sphere of life is not adequate to their abilities.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test.

— Karl Kraus

Cranks live by theory, not by pure desire. They want votes, peace, nuts, liberty, and spinning-looms not because they love these things, as a child loves jam, but because they think they ought to have them. That is one element which makes the crank.

— Rose Macaulay

The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.

— H. L. Mencken

The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.

— John Stuart Mill

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 vigor, and moral courage which it contained.

— John Stuart Mill

Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.

— Dame Edith Sitwell

So long as a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him -- pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?

— Laurence Sterne

You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.

— Henry David Thoreau