“England is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, anomalies, hobbies, and humors.”
"The British Character"
Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)
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George Santayana 109
20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with P… 1863–1952Related quotes

"A Commencement Address" (1984), delivered at Williams College; As quoted in: Robert Inchausti (2014) Thinking through Thomas Merton. p. 110
Context: The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even — if you will — eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with. Something, in other words, that can't be shared, like your own skin: not even by a minority. Evil is a sucker for solidity. It always goes for big numbers, for confident granite, for ideological purity, for drilled armies and balanced sheets. Its proclivity for such things has to do with its innate insecurity, but this realization, again, is of small comfort when Evil triumphs.

Milton https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015031297644;view=1up;seq=23 (1900), p. 7

Implosion Magazine, No. 71, p. 12 (Callum Coats: Energy Evolution (2000))
Implosion Magazine

“I don't have hobbies; hobbies cost money. Interests are quite free.”

319 U.S. 641-42
Judicial opinions, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)
Context: The case is made difficult not because the principles of its decision are obscure but because the flag involved is our own. Nevertheless, we apply the limitations of the Constitution with no fear that freedom to be intellectually and spiritually diverse or even contrary will disintegrate the social organization. To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds. We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

“One of his hobbies was to wait for the American Shakespeare — a hobby more patient than angling.”
'The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) The Secret Garden
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)