"Idiosyncrasy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of rabid veget- and other "arians", most foods are good (making allowances for personal idiosyncrasy) if thoroughly masticated. The oft-quoted analogy of the cow is incorrect, for herbivora are able to digest cellulose; but even cows masticate ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... of their recreations—a thing largely governed by national idiosyncrasy—the masses have advanced. And this we may say without losing sight of the devastations of intemperance since the distillation of grain was introduced, about a century and a half ago. With an enhanced ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... "Merely an idiosyncrasy of mine," answered Von Stein, showing his teeth. "Before anything is done I must, in order to aid the receptivity of your mind, go a little further with the explanation of certain things which I mentioned the other day. I ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... in their striking illustration of the soft, weak, spiritually self-indulgent nature of the man, they assist us, far more than many pages of criticism would do, to understand one particular aspect of his literary idiosyncrasy. The sentimentalist of real life ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... her idiosyncrasy that these tailors, furriers, machinists, shirtmakers, by whom she was surrounded in East London, stirred her imagination far more readily than the dwellers in great houses and the wearers of fine raiment had ever stirred it. And Marcella, in the kindled sympathetic state, was ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... being to free himself from a narrow subjectivity and to give scope to his wide human sympathies and to his passion for perfection of utterance. It seemed to him that a plausible originality might degenerate into mere idiosyncrasy, and that universality of appeal should be a musician's highest goal. When he resigned his post and came before the public with his first large work, a concerto for pianoforte and orchestra, the gain made in increased power ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... "scientific." For the rest, it is all but demonstrable that "scientific" literary criticism is impossible, unless the word "scientific" is to have its meaning very illegitimately altered. For the essential qualities of literature, as of all art, are communicated by the individual, they depend upon idiosyncrasy: and this makes science in any proper sense powerless. She can deal only with classes, only with general laws; and so long as these classes are constantly reduced to "species of one," and these laws are set at nought by incalculable ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... consciousness as a reburnishing there of some imbedded device. Its character and relations are only slightly modified at each fresh rejuvenation. To catch the passing phenomenon in all its novelty and idiosyncrasy is a work of artifice and curiosity. Such an exercise does violence to intellectual instinct and involves an aesthetic power of diving bodily into the stream of sensation, having thrown overboard all rational ballast and escaped at once the inertia and the momentum of ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... only equalled by his outsight, and he suffered in a way not to be readily conceived, from any failure in beauty, physical, moral, or intellectual. It is not, therefore, mere love of upholstery that impels him to ask for perfect settings to priceless gems of art; but a native idiosyncrasy, which always made me feel that "the New Jerusalem," "even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal," "where shall in no wise enter anything that defileth, neither what worketh abomination nor maketh a lie," would alone satisfy him, or rather alone not give ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Paolina was as thoroughly and essentially modest and innocent a girl as ever breathed; but she was so "by the grace of God,"—from natural idiosyncrasy and instinctive purity of heart, that is to say, rather than from teaching of any kind, or from any knowledge of good or evil. She was an orphan, the child of parents who were "nobody," and she was left in the world to find her own way ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... and down in parallel furrows; the eye wanders in devious curves, with abrupt bends, and the direction of its course at any instant depends on four causes: (1) on the easiest sequence of muscular motion, speaking in a general sense, (2) on idiosyncrasy, (3) on the mood, and (4) on the associations current at the moment. The effect of idiosyncrasy ft excellently illustrated by the "Number-Forms," where we observe that a very special sharply-defined track of mental vision ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... was it an idiosyncrasy, as I have known those who by combing their hair can elicit sparks with a crackling as from a cat's back rubbed. It is very possible that the sleeve might be silk, tightened either on a very hairy arm, or else on woollen, and by shaking ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... considerations of honour or friendship had stood between him and his desires; but I believed—for what reason save my own egregious vanity, I know not—that for me he had a peculiar regard. I believed that it was an idiosyncrasy of this wolf to look upon my sheepfold as sacred from his depredations. I was ashamed of any doubts that crossed my mind as to his loyalty, and did not hesitate to thrust my lamb between his jaws. And while he was giving the lie direct to my faith, I, poor fool, ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... spoken. He, the master of Wendover Abbey, to whom the possession of things that money could buy must needs be a dead certainty. But it was evidently a part of his character to make light of his wealth; assuredly a pleasant idiosyncrasy. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Flower-warmth and fragrance are on her page, the soft low summer wind seems to be speaking with you as you read, her characters are like the stars impersonated, and still, however lofty her nature, always and forever genial. You catch her own idiosyncrasy throughout, and believe, that, like Evelyn Hope, she was made of spirit, fire, and dew. When we remember the very slight effect ever visible to her of all her labor, there is something sad in the thought of this young soul, thrilled with its own fervors and buoyant in anticipation, sending forth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... many forms, and with genius the most diverse, who have so steadily set themselves to idealize the great types of public life and of the phases of human history. Let us all beware lest worship of the idiosyncrasy of our peerless Shakespeare blind us to the value of the great masters who in a different world and with different aims have presented the development of civilization in a series of dramas, where the unity of a few great types of man and of society is ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... become the very essence of his volition. For a person is a specific existence—not man in general (a term to which no real existence corresponds); but a particular human being. The term "character" likewise expresses this idiosyncrasy of will and intelligence. But character comprehends all peculiarities whatever, the way in which a person conducts himself in private relations, etc., and is not limited to his idiosyncrasy in its practical and active phase. I shall, therefore, use the term "passion," understanding ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... and had insisted—and this she stated was the one particular thing that endeared him to her—had insisted on paying his board a MONTH IN ADVANCE, instead of waiting until the thirty days had elapsed. His excuse for this unheard-of idiosyncrasy was that he might some day be suddenly called away, too suddenly even to notify her of his departure, and that he did not want either his belongings or his landlady's mind disturbed during ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... contradiction is particularly to be recognized when the differing ideas or beliefs have arisen not within the same individual mind but in different minds, and are therefore colored by personal or partisan interest and warped by idiosyncrasy of mental constitution. The contradictions of, or rather among, ideas and beliefs, with which we are now concerned, are more extensive and more varied than mere logical duels; they are also less definite, less precise. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... wet-blanketism that tries sanguine women's souls more sorely than open opposition. Some Johns make it a point of manly duty to discourage at first hearing any plan that has originated with a woman. I am fond of John, but this idiosyncrasy cannot be ignored. Nor is it entirely explicable upon any principle known in feminine ethics, unless it be intended by Providence as a counterweight to the womanly proclivity to see but one side of a question when we are ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... that De Foe had discovered in 'Robinson Crusoe' precisely the field in which his talents could be most effectually applied; and that a very slight alteration in the subject-matter might change the merit of his work to a disproportionate extent. The more special the idiosyncrasy upon which a man's literary success is founded, the greater, of course, the probability that a small change will disconcert him. A man who can only perform upon the drum will have to wait for certain combinations of other instruments ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... know better the history of the political and ecclesiastical struggles in which he took part, and the philosophical doctrines which he accepted and interpreted; and conversely, we understand the period the better when we see how its beliefs and passions affected a man of abnormal genius and marked idiosyncrasy of character. The historical revelation is the more complete, precisely because Dante was not a commonplace or average person but a man of unique force, mental and moral. The remark may suggest what is the special value of the literary ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... the ordinary work of his followers is confined within narrow limits, and not easily perceived at a glance. The difference between blank verse in the hands of its few masters and in the hands of a third-rate imitator strikes the ear in every line. Far more is left to the individual idiosyncrasy. But it does not at all follow, and in fact it is quite untrue that the distinction which turns on an apparently insignificant element is therefore unimportant. The value of all good work ultimately depends on touches so fine as to elude the sight. And the proof is that ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... was now explained, and I afterwards found out (every man having his hobby) that the idiosyncrasy of this officer's disposition had led him to the practice of neutralising the males of any species of bird or beast, in order to render them ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... that musical sounds produce a marked effect upon the circulation. The pulse-rate is usually quickened, and the force of the heart-beats increased in varying degrees, dependent upon the pitch, intensity and timbre of the sounds, and the idiosyncrasy of the individual.[188:2] ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... severer graces of Hellenic art, and married in his works spontaneous and supple gesture with forms of chaste sobriety, clothing them in delicately harmonious tones, of which the studied arrangement announced to the first glance the refined idiosyncrasy of his artistic temper. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... of the leading principles' which guide them. The philosophy of the matter rests mainly on the fact that it is very rare for any two persons to write hands similar enough to deceive a careful observer, unless one is imitating the other. "Fists," like faces, have all some special idiosyncrasy, and the imitator has not merely to copy that of some one else ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... critical edition, without attempting to harmonize the different editors or to apply any general rules of my own. The reader is thus assured of a fairly authentic text, though he will find inconsistencies of spelling due to the idiosyncrasy of editors. Thus one editor may preserve vnd or vnnd, while another prints und; one may have itzt, another ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... flights of her imagination, she pictured herself in some new country with Bertie. An adventurous, reckless nature such as his, she thought, turned every gift to evil in the commonplace life where his idiosyncrasy had no play; but detached from his idle mess-room habits, and launched into a new career, when to live at all involved exertion of mind and body, would metamorphosize her hero into ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... occasionally at night Mr. Enwright, in the little room, had suggested valuable solutions of certain problems. In detail he was severely critical of George's design, and he would pour delicate satires upon the idiosyncrasy which caused the wilful boy to 'impurify' (a word from Enwright's private vocabulary) a Renaissance creation with Saracenic tendencies in the treatment of ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... said. "There are four million Murnans, friendly people who consider a white skin no more than a personal idiosyncrasy. Aaron's what his folks call a ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... Though gives you the impression that he thinks you are some one else. A pleasant, unaffected man to talk to. Somewhat dazed, however, in effect. Curious manner of speech, of which evidently he is unconscious, partly native English accent, partly temperamental idiosyncrasy. A very simple eccentric, what in the eighteenth century was called ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... that I have held the clue as they have lost themselves in their own labyrinth. I know that many, and some of great celebrity, have sympathised with the feelings which inspired these volumes; nor, while I have elucidated the idiosyncrasy of genius, have I less studied the habits and characteristics of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... most extraordinary character, who, in most other points, commanded respect: he was a kind man and a good officer; but from the idiosyncrasy of his disposition, whether from habit or from nature, could not speak the truth. I say from nature, because I have witnessed the vice of stealing equally strong, and never to be eradicated. It was in a young messmate of good family, and who was supplied with money to almost ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... haw and say: "Seven tums eight? Why—ah, lemme see now. Seven tums—what was it you said? Oh, seven tums eight. Why—ah, seven tums eight is sixty-three—fifty-six I mean." There's nothing really to spelling. It's just an idiosyncrasy. If there was really anything useful in it, you could do it by machinery—just the same as you can add by machinery, or write with a typewriter, or play the piano with one of these things with cut paper in it. Spelling is an old-fashioned, ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... shrewdness: Wagner always affected superiority in regard to the word "opera"—), just as the word "spirit" is a misunderstanding in the New Testament.—He was not enough of a psychologist for drama; he instinctively avoided a psychological plot—but how?—by always putting idiosyncrasy in its place.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Very modern—eh? Very Parisian! very decadent!{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Incidentally, the plots that Wagner knows how to unravel with the help of dramatic inventions, are of quite another kind. For example, let us suppose ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... satirical, though not cruelly so; but satire had become pure whimsicality at last; and he came to see that, on the whole, the world was imperfect, but also, on the whole, was moving toward perfection rather than imperfection. He grew to realize that what seemed so often weakness in men was tendency and idiosyncrasy rather than evil. And in the end he thought better of himself as he came to think better of all others. For he had thought less of all the world because he had thought so little of himself. He had overestimated his own faults, ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... little with you compared with the preceding. Besides, I have long observed, that arguments drawn from your own personal interests more often act on you as narcotics than as stimulants, and that in money concerns you have some small portion of pig-nature in your moral idiosyncrasy, and, like these amiable creatures, must occasionally be pulled backward from the boat in order to make you enter it. All success attend you, for if hard thinking and hard reading are merits, you have deserved it. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... not alert, and while it did not convey actual malice or ill-will, it roused in the spectator an uncomfortable feeling, not altogether easy to analyze. He wore his iron gray locks quite long, and to this distinguishing idiosyncrasy, as well as to his invariable custom of taking his dog with him wherever he went, was due the interest always shown in him by street urchins. On account of his whimsicalities, he had acquired the ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... woman's narrative the author seems to recollect a fundamental sentence of Sterne's creed, the inevitable admixture of the whimsical, and here he introduces into the sentimental relation a Shandean idiosyncrasy: from page 43 the narrative leaps back to the beginning of the volume, and Schummel advises the reader to turn back and re-read, referring incidentally to his confused fashion of narration. The awkwardness with which this is done proves ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... far thwarted; and as in mental training the question is always pertinent, so here we may ask whether it be not best in all cases to some extent, and in some cases almost exclusively, to develop in the direction in which we most excel, to emphasize physical individuality and even idiosyncrasy, rather than to strive for monotonous uniformity. Weaknesses and parts that lag behind are the most easily overworked to the point of reaction and perhaps permanent injury. Again, work for curative purposes lacks the exuberance ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... blessing the persecutors, comes as a kind of play upon words, and is obviously occasioned by the verbal association. It would come more appropriately at a later part of the chapter, but its occurrence here is characteristic of Paul's idiosyncrasy. We may represent the connection of these two clauses by such a rendering as: Pursue hospitality, and as for those who pursue ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... of Audrey, were we?' he replied, with a slight change of expression. 'I think it is the Ross idiosyncrasy to wander hopelessly from any given subject; I imagined that we were suggesting an impossible wife for your humble servant. Far be it from me to deny myself comfort in the shape ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... parents, and regulate it to the written and prescribed laws of charity: and if I hold the true anatomy of myself, I am delineated and naturally framed to such a piece of virtue; for I am of a constitution so general that it consorts and sympathizeth with all things: I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humor, air, anything. I wonder not at the French for their dishes of frogs, snails, and toadstools; nor at the Jews for locusts and grasshoppers; but being amongst them, make them my common viands, and I find they agree with my stomach as well as theirs. I could digest a salad ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... ended by being violently sick into the bowl of pig's blood. In hunting Ishmael found, like many another, that his own excitement helped him to bear with the thought of the fox's pain, though he was always glad, in guilty secret, when there was no kill. It was not this idiosyncrasy that troubled Boase; it was the social questions that hunting evoked. Boase, who also followed to hounds, felt his heart glow to see how well the boy was received; for Ishmael's surly shyness had passed into a new phase, expressed by a rather charming deference mingled with independence which ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... overlaid by the acquisitions of the man, emotions that jar with physical impulses, inexplicable pains and diseases. And not only have we to remember that we are dealing with disharmonies that may at the very best be only patched together, but we are dealing with matters in which the element of idiosyncrasy is essential, insisting upon an incalculable flexibility in any rule we make, unless we are to take types and indeed whole classes of personality and write them down as absolutely bad and fit only for suppression ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells |
