C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Eccentricity
Eccentricity is developed monomania.
Who affects useless singularities has surely a little mind.
Even beauty cannot always palliate eccentricity.
Men are of necessity so mad, that not to be mad were madness in another form.
Often extraordinary excellence, not being rightly conceived, does rather offend than please.
Oddities and singularities of behavior may attend genius; but when they do, they are its misfortunes and blemishes. The man of true genius will be ashamed of them, or at least will never affect to be distinguished by them.
Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has 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.