Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with; as if, observes our author himself, any originality but our own could be expected to content us! In fact all strange thing are apt, without fault of theirs, to estrange us at first view, and unhappily scarcely anything is perfectly plain, but what is also perfectly common.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian

“Jean Paul Friedrich Richter,” Edinburgh Review No. 91, Art. 7 (1827-7/10)
    (Source)

A review of Heinrich Döring, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter's Life, with a Sketch of his Works (1826).