eccentricity

• Jesus free from

100:7.3But the Mas­ter was so rea­son­able, so ap­proach­able. He was so prac­ti­cal in all his min­istry, while all his plans were char­ac­ter­ized by such sanc­ti­fied com­mon sense. He was so free from all freak­ish, er­ratic, and ec­cen­tric ten­den­cies. He was never capri­cious, whim­si­cal, or hys­ter­i­cal. In all his teach­ing and in ev­ery­thing he did there was al­ways an ex­qui­site dis­crim­i­na­tion as­so­ci­ated with an ex­traor­di­nary sense of pro­pri­ety.

100:7.4The Son of Man was al­ways a well-poised per­son­al­ity. Even his en­e­mies main­tained a whole­some re­spect for him; they even feared his pres­ence. Je­sus was un­afraid. He was sur­charged with di­vine en­thu­si­asm, but he never be­came fa­nat­i­cal. He was emo­tion­ally ac­tive but never flighty. He was imag­i­na­tive but al­ways prac­ti­cal. He frankly faced the re­al­i­ties of life, but he was never dull or pro­saic. He was coura­geous but never reck­less; pru­dent but never cow­ardly. He was sym­pa­thetic but not sen­ti­men­tal; unique but not ec­cen­tric. He was pi­ous but not sanc­ti­mo­nious. And he was so well-poised be­cause he was so per­fectly uni­fied.

• shun

149:4.4And then Je­sus dis­coursed on the dan­gers of cour­age and faith, how they some­times lead un­think­ing souls on to reck­less­ness and pre­sump­tion. He also showed how pru­dence and dis­cre­tion, when car­ried too far, lead to cow­ardice and fail­ure. He ex­horted his hear­ers to strive for orig­i­nal­ity while they shunned all ten­dency to­ward ec­cen­tric­ity. He pleaded for sym­pa­thy with­out sen­ti­men­tal­ity, piety with­out sanc­ti­mo­nious­ness. He taught rev­er­ence free from fear and su­per­sti­tion.