Eccentricity

(199 votes)   The world thinks eccentricity in great things is genius, but in small things, only crazy.

Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
1803-1873, British Novelist, Poet

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(124 votes)   The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.

H. L. Mencken
1880-1956, American Editor, Author, Critic, Humorist

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

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
1749-1832, German Poet, Dramatist, Novelist

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(106 votes)   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
1713-1768, British Author

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(99 votes)   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
1806-1873, British Philosopher, Economist

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(98 votes)   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
1948-, Duke of Edinburgh, Son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip

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(88 votes)   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
1806-1873, British Philosopher, Economist

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(88 votes)   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
1887-1964, British Poet

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(87 votes)   You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.

Henry David Thoreau
1817-1862, American Essayist, Poet, Naturalist

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(79 votes)   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
1881-1958, British Novelist, Essayist

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