Eccentricities Quotes & Sayings

At the time, it seemed to me that Jeremy was spending a lot of time with a piece of plastic pressed against his ear, talking to himself. Which was fine by me. We all have our eccentricities. Jeremy liked talking to plastic; I liked hunting and eating the rats that ventured into the motel room. Or, at least I did like hunting and eating the rats, until Jeremy caught me and promptly kiboshed that hobby. Some of us are less tolerant of eccentricities than others. — Kelley Armstrong

Eccentricities of genius. — Charles Dickens

As time went on, Eva grew to respect and even admire the eccentricities of Madame Zed. For example, rather than adapt to her surroundings, she transformed them. — Kathleen Tessaro

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

I'm one of those very lucky people who absolutely love what they do for a living. There is no career better suited to my eccentricities, strengths, and passions than that of a children's book author. — Mary Pope Osborne

My mother's people, the people who captured my imagination when I was growing up, were of the Deep South - emotional, changeable, touched with charisma and given to histrionic flourishes. They were courageous under tension and unexpectedly tough beneath their wild eccentricities, for they had and unusually close working agreement with God. They also had an unusually high quota of bullshit. — Willie Morris

I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him. That was unavoidable for, from his first week, he was the most conspicuous man of his year by reason of his beauty, which was arresting, and his eccentricities of behaviour, which seemed to know no bounds ... I was struck less by his looks than by the fact that he was carrying a large teddy-bear. — Evelyn Waugh

Even my pathological love of Japan and its beauties, glories and eccentricities is sorely tested by 'The Grudge 2,' from Takashi Shimizu, a movie so bewildering and impenetrable that I believe it siphoned off a good 40 IQ points. — Stephen Hunter

I need to learn to recognize and identify these danger signs when I see them, and not brush them off as "eccentricities," "lovable oddities," or "a sign that he s crying out for help and the comforting of a codependent nurturer that only I, Princess Enabler, can provide. Bad boyfriends don't disguise themselves; their girlfriends do it for them. — Laurie Notaro

If you want to see eccentricities, I'll be grotesque before your eyes. — Michael Jackson

People who live in SoHo want to be close to the energy, culture, and eccentricities of New York's most charming neighborhoods. — Jared Kushner

His act was rather that of a harmless lunatic than an enemy. We were not so new to the country as not to know that the solitary life of many a plainsman had a tendency to develop eccentricities of conduct and character not always easily distinguishable from mental aberration. A man is like a tree: in a forest of his fellows he will grow as straight as his generic and individual nature permits; alone, in the open, he yields to the deforming stresses and tortions that environ him. — Ambrose Bierce

Flowers construct the most charming geometries: circles like the sun, ovals, cones, curlicues and a variety of triangular eccentricities, which when viewed with the eye of a magnifying glass seem a Lilliputian frieze of psychedelic silhouettes. — Duane Michals

It may be expecting too much to expect most intellectuals to have common sense, when their whole life is based on their being uncommon
that is, saying things that are different from what everyone else is saying. There is only so much genuine originality in anyone. After that, being uncommon means indulging in pointless eccentricities or clever attempts to mock or shock. — Thomas Sowell

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

Everyone likes to hear that their eccentricities and their addictions are simply evidence of their sensitive artistic nature. — Russell Smith

Behind everyone's learned behaviors and odd eccentricities lurks a soul, ready to make contact if only coaxed out through a crack in the ego. — Ram Dass

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

If you do grow up feeling as though you don't quite fit in as a child, it's very easy to decide you're certain not going to fit in as an adult. You hang on to your eccentricities and hate the idea of conforming. It's a common pattern. — Derren Brown

BBC Radio is not so much an art or industry as it is a way of life ... a mirror that reflects ... the eccentricities, the looniness that make Britons slightly different from other humans. — Morley Safer

In London, she'd overheard more than one matron decrying what they considered Esme Byron's inappropriate eccentricities, aghast that she was allowed so much personal freedom and the ability to voice opinions they considered unsuitable for an unmarried young woman barely out of the schoolroom. But her family always stood by her, proud of her artistic talent and uniformly deaf to the complaints of any critics who might say she needed a firmer hand.
'What must Ned and Mama be thinking now?' Were they regretting that they had not listened to those critics? Wishing they'd kept a tighter rein on her activities rather than letting her venture out as she chose?
But she would have gone mad being constrained and confined the way she knew most girls her age were. She could never have been borne the suffocating restrictions, the smothering tedium of being expected to go everywhere with a chaperone in tow, or worse, being cooped up inside doing embroidery or playing the pianoforte. — Tracy Anne Warren

Self-assurance doesn't come from looking perfect and having a great title, but from accepting yourself with all you mistakes and eccentricities. — Cecelie Berry

These little eccentricities on my grandfather's part implied no ill-will whatsoever towards my friends. But Bloch had displeased my family for other reasons. He had begun by annoying my father, who, seeing him come in with wet clothes, had asked him with keen interest: "Why, M. Bloch, is there a change in the weather; has it been raining? I can't understand it; the barometer has been 'set fair.'" Which drew from Bloch nothing more instructive than "Sir, I am absolutely incapable of telling you whether it has rained. I live so resolutely apart from physical contingencies that my senses no longer trouble to inform me of them." "My poor boy," said my father after Bloch had gone, "your friend is out of his mind. Why, he couldn't even tell me what the weather was like. As if there could be anything more interesting! He is an imbecile. — Marcel Proust

Her philosophy is very empowering - that everything we want or need in life we can have, and we can get for ourselves. (She also believes that you should say nice things to your water if you want to encourage its healing properties, but every sage has a few eccentricities.) I — Megyn Kelly

Though the boys never admit it as much, it is crucial the Lisbon sisters are all thin and beautiful within reason. There are a handful of imperfect features among them but nothing that would make the sum of each one's parts less than desirable. In the safety of being attractive, their eccentricities are as precious as their bodies. Their bodies protect all eccentricity from becoming "strange" or "gross" in the way similar predilections are characterized when possessed by heavier or uglier girls. — Alana Massey

Florence had noticed one or two eccentricities in herself lately, which might be the result of hard work, or of age, or of living alone. When the letters came, for example, she often found herself wasting time in looking at the postmarks and wondering whoever they could be from, instead of opening them in a sensible manner and finding out at once. — Penelope Fitzgerald

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

Probably I have more phobias, fear and eccentricities than I would care to admit. I don't think I'm in danger of losing my mind, but I do often question my own behavior. I have a very bad temper, and it's not always healthy for me and for others. I make my way in the world more difficult, and I could do with a little more yoga. — Denis O'Hare

There comes a time when those who flattered us and those whose wit and charm deceived us may leave us to our fate. Those are times when we want to be friends, good friends, common friends, loved ones, tied with immortal bonds
people who will nurse our illnesses, tolerate our eccentricities, and love us with pure, undefined affection. Then we need an unspoiled companion who will not count our wrinkles, remember our stupidities nor remember our weaknesses; then is when we need a loving companion with whom we have suffered and wept and prayed and worshipped; one with whom we have suffered sorrow and disappointments., one who loves us for what we are or intended to be rather than what we appear to be in our gilded shell. — Spencer W. Kimball

A gifted wizard, but an unlikely politician, McLaird was an exceptionally taciturn man who preferred to communicate in monosyllables and expressive puffs of smoke that he produced through the end of his wand. Forced from office out of sheer irritation at his eccentricities. — J.K. Rowling

It was as if she had been made afresh out of new elements, and must perforce be permitted to live her own life and be a law unto herself without her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

He had a few eccentricities himself and was tolerant of the peculiarities of others; indeed, he rather relished the ridiculous. — Carson McCullers

Resisting conformity and developing some small eccentricities are among the steps to independence and self-confidence. — Al MacInnis

Everyone thinks his family is strange," Del said, scratching Scootie behind the ears, "but it's just that ... because we're closer to the people we love, we tend to see them through a magnifying glass, through a thicker lens of emotion, and we exaggerate their eccentricities. — Dean Koontz

The most difficult thing about living as a writer is precisely 'having to write.' Pretending to be a writer is easy. Living freely, reading many books, going on frequent trips, cultivating minor eccentricities ... but genuinely being a writer is difficult, because you have to write something that will convince both yourself and readers. — Kim Young-ha

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

We hold each other hostage to our eccentricities." I smiled again, an unseen smile. "We're made for each other. — Dean Koontz

Los Angeles is a sophisticated city; it has no eccentricities and no heart. — Stella Benson

I realised that I had set so many of my novels and stories abroad, because custom had prevented me from seeing how exotic my own country is. Britain really is an immense lunatic asylum. That is one of the things that distinguishes us among the nations ... We are rigid and formal in some ways, but we believe in the right to eccentricity, as long as the eccentricities are large enough ... Woe betide you if you hold your knife incorrectly, but good luck to you if you wear a loincloth and live up a tree. — Louis De Bernieres

People of uncommon abilities generally fall into eccentricities when their sphere of life is not adequate to their abilities. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

It was made clear to me that I wasn't supposed to trouble the moody Creator with any pesky questions about the eccentricities of His cosmic system ... Thus my idea of heaven was that I got to spend eternity sitting at the feet of God, grilling Him. "Let me get this straight," I'd say, by way of introduction. "It's your position that every person born has to suffer because Eve couldn't resist a healthy between-meals snack? — Sarah Vowell

Instead of exhibiting talent in the hope that the world would forgive their eccentricities, they have exhibited only their eccentricities, in the hope that the world would give them credit for talent. — Charles Caleb Colton

In our imaginations the adults of our childhood remain extreme, essential - we might say radical since they are the roots that fed luxuriant later systems. Those first bohemians, for instance, stay operatic in memory even though were we to meet them today - well, what would we think, we who've elaborated our eccentricities with a patience, a professionalism they never knew? — Edmund White

Perhaps this is what we mean by sanity: that, whatever our self-admitted eccentricities might be, we are not villains of our own stories. — Teju Cole

Petronius would take his free bread buns and run. I happened to know that since Petro had been elected to the watch he had never cast a vote. He believed a man on a public salary should be impartial. I didn't agree but I admired him being so stubborn in his eccentricities. Aufidius Crispus would be an unusual politician if he had allowed for such morality in the voters he was courting. — Lindsey Davis

A person can transfigure the disquiet of solitude in a positive or negative manner. Periods of enforced solitude can cause a person to develop eccentricities of conduct and character, parley with a number of mental aberrations, partake in self-destructive diversions, or use their time productively to contemplate worldly issues and diligently work on self-improvement. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Like all best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements. — Queen Elizabeth II

He was changed as completely as Amory Blaine could ever be changed. Amory plus Beatrice plus two years in Minneapolis - these had been his ingredients when he entered St. Regis'. But the Minneapolis years were not a thick enough overlay to conceal the "Amory plus Beatrice" from the ferreting eyes of a boarding school, so St. Regis' had very painfully drilled Beatrice out of him and begun to lay down new and more conventional planking on the fundamental Amory. But both St. Regis' and Amory were unconscious of the fact that this fundamental Amory had not in himself changed. Those qualities for which he had suffered: his moodiness, his tendency to pose, his laziness, and his love of playing the fool, were now taken as a matter of course, recognized eccentricities in a star quarter-back, a clever actor, and the editor of the "St. Regis' Tattler"; it puzzled him to see impressionable small boys imitating the very vanities that had not long ago been contemptible weaknesses. — F Scott Fitzgerald

At the very opposite of these eccentricities, the chiefly urban character of derive, in touch with those centres of possibilities and meanings that are the metropolises transformed by industry, would correspond to Marx's sentence: 'Men can see nothing around them that is not their own image; everything speaks to them of themselves. Their very landscape is alive. — Tom McDonough

I look upon paradoxes as the impotent efforts of men who, not having capacity to draw attention and celebrity from good sense, fly to eccentricities to make themselves noted. — Horace Walpole

Celebrate yourself. Follow your passions and eccentricities, because they are yours alone. You are unique! If everyone did that, I'm pretty sure there would be world peace. — Kandyse McClure

Evolution throws a wonderful light on all the struggles, eccentricities, tortuous developments of the human conscience in the past. It is the only theory of morals that does. And evolution throws just as much light on the ethical and social struggle today; and it is the only theory that does. What a strange age ours is from the religious point of view! What a hopeless age from the philosopher's point of view! Yet it is a very good age, the best that ever was. No evolutionist is a pessimist. — Joseph McCabe

He was incredibly good as Dr Who. He brought all his eccentricities to the role and was so charismatic and charming. He must be the fans firm favourite. — Louise Jameson

Key West has become an imitation of its former self, its eccentricities commoditized for sale to tourists. That "character" you see with a parrot on his shoulder is about as authentic as vinyl siding, employed to provide local color. Gargantuan cruise ships dock two or three times a week, disgorging passengers by the thousands to troll the cheesy T-shirt shops on the main drag, Duval Street. And with all sorts of diversions to keep visitors occupied, like parasailing and jet skiing, tourist season is year-round, clogging the streets with autos, bikes, motor scooters, and pedestrians. I — Philip Caputo

To me, you couldn't write a character like J. Edgar Hoover and have it be believable. I mean, he was a crock pot of eccentricities. We couldn't even fit all his eccentricities into [ the same named] movie. — Dustin Lance Black

Pseudo-modernists pursue individual style because they know they cannot make a name without it; but if they had lived in the eighteenth century their sole object would have been to write correctly, to conform to the manner of the period. In practice, their conforming individualism means an imitation, studiously concealed, of the eccentricities of poems which really are individual. — Laura Riding

Develop your eccentricities early, and no one will think you're going senile later in life — David Ogilvy

Aren't eccentricities fairly common among overachievers. — John Irving

Our industry is full of all sorts of eccentricities and one of them is owning property. — Cliff Richard

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

I slightly feel, having written Paraguay and Newfoundland - and both of them have developed eccentricities through isolation - I am quite relieved to be back in France and Germany, and I want people to enjoy these books for the writing and not because they feel they can laugh - some will laugh - at these eccentric places, that's not what I intend. — John Gimlette

Every man is occasionally visited by the suspicion that the planet on which he is riding is not really going anywhere; that the Force which controls its measured eccentricities hasn't got anything special in mind. If he broods on this somber theme long enough he gets the doleful idea that the laughing children on a merry-go-round or the thin, fine hands of a lady's watch are revolving more purposely than he is. — James Thurber

You didn't think you'd find a Science-savvy mercenary team in the empire without a few eccentricities, did you? Amaranthe asked. — Lindsay Buroker

Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won't think you're going gaga. — David Ogilvy

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

A philosopher ... is not fairly judged by his eccentricities, nor by the frailties to which he is liable; still less should his philosophy as a whole fall into ill-repute because of those among its devotees who have stumbled into wells, or who aimlessly pass their lives in whetting their faculties and then neglecting to use them. — John Grier Hibben

There are those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behavior 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. These are frequently artists and performers, adventurers and wide-life devotees.
Then there are those who feel their own strangeness and are terrified by it. They struggle toward normalcy. They suffer to exactly that degree that they are unable to appear normal to others, or to convince themselves that their aberration does not exist. These are true freaks, who appear, almost always, conventional and dull. — Katherine Dunn

And to love such a librarian requires a surrendering to her eccentricities, a bowing to her pathological quietness, an obeisance to a reticence that is utterly untreatable. If you cannot commit to this sort of dedication, then let her be. Let her wander in wonder among her books and live out her days in her own world without you. — Jesse Giles Christiansen

Hang on to your eccentricities, because they will give you a style. — John Scofield

Eccentricities, of which I know I have
many, do not hold universal sexual and romantic lure. I understand that. — Jessica Park

Chacko had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and was permitted excesses and eccentricities nobody else was. He claimed to be writing a Family Biography that the Family would have to pay him not to publish. Ammu said that there was only one person in the family who was a fit candidate for biographical blackmail and that was Chacko himself. — Arundhati Roy

While we were hastening to Father Moon to tickle his beard a little, the sun was radiating splendor into the observation cabin; now he is squinting modestly at us from the side. I wouldn't have believed the central body of the solar system capable of such skipping about. The worst of it is that, with his eccentricities, he has had an effect upon old Mother Earth, whom I have always considered a trustworthy lady of ripe old age. To say nothing of the moon, this old bachelor goes his own way, and still has the audacity to make advances to Mother Earth. — Otto Willi Gail

I look down at the picture in my hand. It's home, the image slightly dog-eared after two years in various grab bags and holdalls. There's the house, white walls covered in the blue flowers she loves, red poppies stretching away in the background. There's my mother, small and fair, hair falling out of its bun as usual, glasses - one of her many eccentricities - perched on her nose. — Amie Kaufman

There is little I can tell you about Aglaura beyond the things its own inhabitants have always repeated: an array of proverbial virtues, of equally proverbial faults, a few eccentricities, some punctilious regard for rules. — Italo Calvino

I should describe mine own nature as tripartite, my interests consisting of three parallel and dissociated groups
(a) Love of the strange and fantastic. (b) Love of the abstract truth and of scientific logic. (c) Love of the ancient and the permanent. Sundry combinations of these three strains will probably account for all my odd tastes and eccentricities. — H.P. Lovecraft

We feel the pull of the mindless herd, the allure of the pack, but we resist the extreme effects of this influence-and when we do not, we drag our societies down into the bloody wreckage of failed Utopias, led by Hitler or Lenin, or Mao Tse-tung. And the wreckage reminds us that God gave us our individualism and that to surrender it is to follow a dark path. When we fail to see the eccentricities in ourselves and to be amused by them, we become monsters of self-regard. Each in its own way, every family is as eccentric as mine. I guarantee it. Opening your eyes to this truth is to open your heart to humanity. — Anonymous

The art editor in charge of the covers at the 'New Yorker' is Francoise Mouly. She's very familiar with the eccentricities and personalities of cartoonists, so working with her is very easy. — Adrian Tomine

Of all their eccentricities, Sally most ferociously mocked the habit Lobsang and Joshua had developed of watching old movies in the bowels of the Mark Twain. (Joshua was glad she hadn't been on board when the two of them had dressed up for The Blues Brothers.) — Terry Pratchett

No. She's definitely crazy. She's still family, though, and in this family we don't chastise the crazy, we embrace them and love them for their eccentricities. — Amanda M. Lee

Voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent forever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of ma — Mary Shelley

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 [ ... ]. 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? — Julian Barnes

Mornings are cool like a spy,
cool like a rebel,
cool like a rhetorical street fighter,
cool like an unfilled spot where wit and joy once stood,
cool like the man who can make productive use of his demons,
cool like the deciphered eccentricities of good friends,
cool like the later protest-and-psychedelic era. — Brian D'Ambrosio