Colin Wilson Quotes

Quotes about:

• Life itself is an exile. The way home is not the way back.

  Colin Wilson

  Home, Way, Exile

  Colin Wilson (1982). “The Outsider”, Tarcher

  55 Copy quote

• Imagination should be used, not to escape reality but to create it.

  Colin Wilson

  Reality, Imagination, Used

  28 Copy quote

• The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain.

  Colin Wilson

  Rain, Men, Average

  "Another Kind of Life; Victorian Giants review - birth of the outsider" by Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. March 11, 2018.

  33 Copy quote

• When we pull back and get, for a moment, the 'bird's eye' view of life, it reveals meanings that are ungraspable by the narrow focus of our usual worm's eye view

  Colin Wilson

  Eye, Views, Focus

  19 Copy quote

• Man is the only animal who is prone to insanity.

  Colin Wilson

  Animal, Men, Insanity

  Colin Wilson (1983). “Access to inner worlds: the story of Brad Absetz”, Rider & Co

  4 Copy quote

• When I open my eyes in the morning, I am not confronted by a world, but by a million possible worlds.

  Colin Wilson

  Morning, Eye, World

  15 Copy quote

• Turning on the light is easy if you know where the switch is.

  Colin Wilson

  Light, Easy, Knows

  20 Copy quote

• Ask the Outsider what he ultimately wants,and he will admit he doesn't know.Why? Because he wants it instinctively,and it is not always possible to tell what your instincts are driving towards.

  Colin Wilson

  Want, Outsiders, Driving

  Colin Wilson (1982). “The Outsider”, Tarcher

  15 Copy quote

• The outsider is not sure who he is. He has found an “I”, but it is not his true “I”.’ His main business is to find his way back to himself.

  Colin Wilson

  Way, Outsiders, Found

  Colin Wilson (2014). “The Outsider”, p.194, Diversion Books

  4 Copy quote

• Christianity was an epidemic rather than a religion. It appealed to fear, hysteria and ignorance. It spread across the Western world, not because it was true, but because humans are gullible and superstitious.

  Colin Wilson

  Ignorance, Epidemics, Hysteria

  Colin Wilson (1971). “The Occult: A History”, Vintage

  22 Copy quote

• The worst crimes are not committed by evil degenerates, but by decent and intelligent people taking 'pragmatic' decisions.

  Colin Wilson

  Intelligent, People, Evil

  14 Copy quote

• The mystical impulse in men is somehow a desire to possess the universe. In women, it's a desire to be possessed.

  Colin Wilson

  Men, Desire, Mystical

  "The Black Room". Book by Colin Wilson, p. 108, 1971.

  9 Copy quote

• I've always believed that a writer has got to remain an outsider. If I was offered anything like the Nobel Prize for Literature, I'd find it an extremely difficult conflict because I'd be basically disinclined to accept.

  Colin Wilson

  Literature, Outsiders, Conflict

  Interview with Paul Newman, Abraxas Unbound #7,

  4 Copy quote

• The sheer volume of evidence for survival after death is so immense that to ignore it is like standing at the foot of Mount Everest and insisting that you cannot see the mountain.

  Colin Wilson

  Science, Feet, Survival

  11 Copy quote

• Religion, mysticism and magic all spring from the same basic 'feeling' about the universe: a sudden feeling of meaning, which human beings sometimes 'pick up' accidentally, as your radio might pick up some unknown station. Poets feel that we are cut off from meaning by a thick, lead wall, and that sometimes for no reason we can understand the wall seems to vanish and we are suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of the infinite interestingness of things.

  Colin Wilson

  Wall, Spring, Cutting

  Colin Wilson (1971). “The Occult: A History”, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• The basic paradox about sex is that it always seems to be offering more than it can deliver. A glimpse of a girl undressing through a lighted bedroom window induces a vision of ecstatic delight, but in the actual process of persuading the girl into bed, the vision somehow evaporates.

  Colin Wilson

  Girl, Sex, Offering

  Colin Wilson (1988). “The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders”

  19 Copy quote

• I've always believed that a writer has got to remain an outsider.

  Colin Wilson

  Outsiders

  Interview with Paul Newman, Abraxas Unbound #7,

  6 Copy quote

• I had never doubted my own abilities, but I was quite prepared to believe that "the world" would decline to recognize them.

  Colin Wilson

  Believe, World, Decline

  Colin Wilson (2014). “The Outsider”, p.13, Diversion Books

  9 Copy quote

• Isaiah Berlin once said that there are two kinds of writers, hedgehogs and foxes. He said the fox knows many things, the hedgehog knows just one thing. So Shakespeare is a typical fox; Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are typical hedgehogs. Now, I'm a typical hedgehog. I know just one thing, and I repeat it over and over again. I try to approach it from different angles to make it look different, but it's the same thing.

  Colin Wilson

  Two, Trying, Typical

  24 Copy quote

• If you asked me what is the basis of all my work, it's the feeling there's something basically wrong with human beings.

  Colin Wilson

  Feelings, Working It, Bases

  7 Copy quote

• If you can train your senses to perceive the movement of the minute hand of a clock, what is to stop you for training them to 'slow down' when you look at a tree or a puddle?

  Colin Wilson

  Hands, Tree, Training

  29 Copy quote

• Being very famous is not the fun it sounds. It merely means you're being chased by a lot of people and you lose your privacy.

  Colin Wilson

  Fun, Mean, People

  "Where the outsider went next". Interview with Lisa Gee, www.theguardian.com. February 15, 2002.

  4 Copy quote

• No matter how honest scientists think they are, they are still influenced by various unconscious assumptions that prevent them from attaining true objectivity. Expressed in a sentence, Fort 's principle goes something like this: People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.

  Colin Wilson

  Believe, Thinking, Objectivity

  "Mysteries". Book by Colin Wilson, 1978.

  7 Copy quote

• Sexual activity is driven by the same aims and motives as reading poetry or listening to music: to escape the limitations imposed by the need for particularity in the consciousness.

  Colin Wilson

  Reading, Listening, Needs

  "The Origins of the Sexual Impulse" by Colin Wilson, (p. 75), 1963.

  14 Copy quote

• The exploration of oneself is usually also an exploration of the world at large, of other writers, a process of comparison with oneself with others, discoveries of kinships, gradual illumination of one's own potentialities.

  Colin Wilson

  Discovery, Illumination, World

  "The Outsider". Book by Colin Wilson, p. 231, 1956.

  8 Copy quote

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