Eccentricity Quotes

“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”
― Bertrand Russell

“I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of catfish.”
― Edith Sitwell

“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. 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. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“You’re mad, bonkers, completely off your head. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”
― Lewis Carroll

“Houses, like people, are apt to become rather eccentric if left too much on their own; this house was the architectural equivalent of an old gentleman in a worn dressing-gown and torn slippers, who got up and went to bed at odd times of day, and who kept up a continual conversation with friends no one else could see.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“I am an artist you know ... it is my right to be odd.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

“I'd rather be a little weird than all boring.”
― Rebecca McKinsey

“Weirdism is definitely the cornerstone of many an artist's career.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

“No matter how valuable you are and your ideas, fools will certainly play both of you down, so exclude yourselves from the inflammatory environs of fools.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“The whole point of extravagance is to act like a fool and feel like a fool, but enjoy it.”
― Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination

“The old ways are dead. And you need people around you who concur. That means hanging out more with the creative people, the freaks, the real visionaries, than you're already doing. Thinking more about what their needs are, and responding accordingly. Avoid the dullards; avoid the folk who play it safe. They can't help you anymore. Their stability model no longer offers that much stability. They are extinct, they are extinction.”
― Hugh MacLeod

“There was no Disney World then, just rows of orange trees. Millions of them. Stretching for miles And somewhere near the middle was the Citrus Tower, which the tourists climbed to see even more orange trees. Every month an eighty-year-old couple became lost in the groves, driving up and down identical rows for days until they were spotted by helicopter or another tourist on top of the Citrus Tower. They had lived on nothing but oranges and come out of the trees drilled on vitamin C and checked into the honeymoon suite at the nearest bed-and-breakfast.
"The Miami Seaquarium put in a monorail and rockets started going off at Cape Canaveral, making us feel like we were on the frontier of the future. Disney bought up everything north of Lake Okeechobee, preparing to shove the future down our throats sideways.
"Things evolved rapidly! Missile silos in Cuba. Bales on the beach. Alligators are almost extinct and then they aren't. Juntas hanging shingles in Boca Raton. Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo skinny-dipping off Key Biscayne. We atone for atrocities against the INdians by playing Bingo. Shark fetuses in formaldehyde jars, roadside gecko farms, tourists waddling around waffle houses like flocks of flightless birds. And before we know it, we have The New Florida, underplanned, overbuilt and ripe for a killer hurricane that'll knock that giant geodesic dome at Epcot down the trunpike like a golf ball, a solid one-wood by Buckminster Fuller.
"I am the native and this is my home. Faded pastels, and Spanish tiles constantly slipping off roofs, shattering on the sidewalk. Dogs with mange and skateboard punks with mange roaming through yards, knocking over garbage cans. Lunatics wandering the streets at night, talking about spaceships. Bail bondsmen wake me up at three A.M. looking for the last tenant. Next door, a mail-order bride is clubbed by a smelly ma in a mechanic's shirt. Cats violently mate under my windows and rats break-dance in the drop ceiling. And I'm lying in bed with a broken air conditioner, sweating and sipping lemonade through a straw. And I'm thinking, geez, this used to be a great state.
"You wanna come to Florida? You get a discount on theme-park tickets and find out you just bough a time share. Or maybe you end up at Cape Canaveral, sitting in a field for a week as a space shuttle launch is canceled six times. And suddenly vacation is over, you have to catch a plane, and you see the shuttle take off on TV at the airport. But you keep coming back, year after year, and one day you find you're eighty years old driving through an orange grove.”
― Tim Dorsey, Florida Roadkill

“Originals cost more than imitations.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“There was a time when a new deputy tried to teach Mr. Fruit about the difference between a red and a green light, but Mr. Fruit had resisted all efforts to reorder what he had been doing perfectly well for many years. He had not only monitored the comings and goings of the town, his presence softened the ingrained evil that flourished along the invisible margins of the town’s consciousness. Any community can be judged in its humanity or corruption by how it manages to accommodate the Mr. Fruits of the world. Colleton simply adjusted itself to Mr. Fruit’s harmonies and ordinations. He did whatever he felt was needed and he did it with style. “That’s the Southern way” my grandmother said. “That’s the nice way.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“Eccentricity may be diverting, Mama, but it is out of place in a wife: certainly in my wife!”
― Georgette Heyer, Sylvester or The Wicked Uncle

“Longevity-and sanity. Eccentric old ladies on Harleys I can deal with.”
― Alison Larkin, The English American

“The Meyricks had their little oddities, streaks of eccentricity from the mother's blood as well as the father's, their minds being like mediaeval houses with unexpected recesses and openings from this into that, flights of steps and sudden outlooks.”
― George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

“Balzac was pretty funny. His philosophy is plain and simple, says basically that pure materialism is a recipe for madness. The only true knowledge for Balzac seems to be in superstition. Everything is subject to analysis. Horde your energy. That’s the secret of life. You can learn a lot from Mr. B. It’s funny to have him as a companion. He wears a monk’s robe and drinks endless cups of coffee. Too much sleep clogs up his mind. One of his teeth falls out, and he says, “What does this mean?” He questions everything. His clothes catch fire on a candle. He wonders if fire is a good sign. Balzac is hilarious.”
― Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One

“In sex, in towel wringing, in dishwashing, as in everything else, he was exactly himself. If being exactly yourself meant you had to suffer the loneliness of being unlike anyone else, he seemed not to mind. The insularity of his lifestyle cradled him.”
― Ling Ma, Bliss Montage

“I could be embarrassed or I could be eccentric. I picked eccentric.”
― Arthur Yeomans, No Ordinary School

“Even as an unconventional and eccentric being, your true people will love you in your most authentic form.”
― Robin S. Baker

“I suppose I'm what they call a decadent, one whose spirit is outwardly defined by those sad glimmers of artificial eccentricity that incarnate an anxious and artful soul in unusual words. Yes, I think that's what I am, and that I'm absurd.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“The passion and excitement that I get from life, when immersed in studying something weird or unconventional, is amazing. It feels as though I’ve found a new toy to play with.”
― Robin S. Baker

“Le testimonianze delle nostre prime follie di cuore le abbiamo bruciate molto tempo fa, quelle delle nostre stravaganze di spirito desideriamo che restino. A vent’anni è necessario essere bizzarri forse non sempre perché il mondo progredisca, ma per lo meno perché il mondo si agiti.”
― Eça de Queirós, O Mistério da Estrada de Sintra

“English: "All people are mad, and many try to pretend they are not."

Česky: „Všichni lidé jsou blázni a mnozí se snaží předstírat, že nejsou.”
― Sebastián Wortys

“English: "From a certain degree of freedom, understanding is impossible."

Česky: „Od určité míry svobody je dorozumění nemožné.”
― Sebastián Wortys

“If you feel unheard or unnoticed, then your divine assignment requires you to go against the grain and set forth your own unique path.”
― Robin S. Baker

“We would never say to a man, "Be eccentric"; but if he cannot help being so, we would not have him be otherwise. The Leaning Tower of Pisa owes much of its fame to its leaning, and although it certainly is not a safe model for architects, we would by no means advise its demolition. Ten to one any builder who tried to erect another would create a huge ruin, and therefore it would not be a safe precedent; but there it is, and who wishes it was other than it is? Serve the Lord, brother, with your very best, and seek to do even better, and whatever your peculiarities, the grace of God will be glorified in you.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon, Eccentric Preachers: Spiritual Lessons and Insights from God’s Peculiar People [Updated and Annotated]

“She had poofy, teased-out brown hair that bounced off her shoulders with every high-flying skip and on her t-shirt was a spiraled sun with little wavy lines jumping off it to match the little wavy distortions in the air that were jumping off her. It was pure, unbridled energy and the sound of it hummed in his ears like when standing dangerously near a power transformer. Or maybe he was witnessing the origin story of the world’s first real superhero, and if so, she was probably going to draw her powers from the electromagnetic field itself.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“I don’t trust masters who can’t be down-to-earth. For me they’re like those eccentric poets who can’t write like everybody else. I accept that they’re eccentric, but I’d like them to show me that it’s because they’re superior to the norm rather than incapable of it.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet