Colin Wilson Quotes - Page 2

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• It is far easier to write an angry letter than to go and say angry things to another person - because as soon as we look in one another's faces we can see the other point of view.

  Colin Wilson

  Writing, Views, Looks

  Colin Wilson (1985). “The essential Colin Wilson”

  15 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

• 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

• Too much success gets you resting on your laurels and creates a kind of quicksand that you can't get out of.

  Colin Wilson

  Too Much, Kind, Laurels

  6 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

• The complex develops out of the simple.

  Colin Wilson

  Simple, Complexes

  7 Copy quote

• One cannot ignore half of life for the purposes of science, and then claim that the results of science give a full and adequate picture of the meaning of life. All discussions of 'life' which begin with a description of man's place on a speck of matter in space, in an endless evolutionary scale, are bound to be half-measures, because they leave out most of the experiences which are important to use as human beings.

  Colin Wilson

  Men, Space, Giving

  "Religion and the Rebel". Book by Colin Wilson, p. 309, 1957.

  14 Copy quote

• It struck me that the popularity of Christmas is a matter of web-like consciousness. Childhood conditions us to relax and expand at Christmas, to forget petty worries and irritations and think in terms of universal peace. And so Christmas is the nearest to mystical experience that most human beings ever approach, with its memories of Dickens and Irving's Bracebridge Hall.

  Colin Wilson

  Christmas, Memories, Thinking

  10 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

• As a young man I was scornful about the supernatural but as I have got older, the sharp line that divided the credible from the incredible has tended to blur; I am aware that the whole world is slightly incredible

  Colin Wilson

  Men, World, Lines

  4 Copy quote

• Could it be that sexual perversion and romanticism sprang from the same longing for distant horizons?

  Colin Wilson

  Horizon, Longing, Perversion

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

  9 Copy quote

• But Zarathustra made it clear in which direction the answer lay; it is towards the artist-psychologist, the intuitional thinker. There are very few such men in the world's literature; the great artists are not thinkers, the great thinkers are seldom artists.

  Colin Wilson

  Artist, Men, Answers

  Colin Wilson (2014). “The Outsider”, p.191, Diversion Books

  9 Copy quote

• I have a strong antipathy to everything connected with gardens, gardening and gardeners. . . . Gardening seems to me a kind of admission of defeat. . . . Man was made for better things than pruning his rose trees. The state of mind of the confirmed gardener seems to me as reprehensible as that of the confirmed alcoholic. Both have capitulated to the world. Both have become lotus eaters and drifters.

  Colin Wilson

  Strong, Men, Garden

  9 Copy quote

• A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors.

  Colin Wilson

  Play, Symphony, Actors

  Colin Wilson (1964). “Brandy of the Damned: Discoveries of a Musical Eclectic”, London : J.Baker

  4 Copy quote

• The real issue is not whether two and two make four or whether two and two make five, but whether life advances by men who love words or by men who love living.

  Colin Wilson

  Real, Men, Two

  Colin Wilson (2014). “The Outsider”, p.353, Diversion Books

  5 Copy quote

• The "passion for incredulity" can produce as much self-deception as the uncritical will to believe.

  Colin Wilson

  Believe, Passion, Self

  Colin Wilson (2011). “Afterlife: An Investigation”, p.307, Doubleday

  7 Copy quote

• Now individual consciousness, as typified in human beings, has great advantages and great disadvantages. Individuality means a narrowing, and narrowness can be useful. It is good for close-up work. We have invented the magnifying glass and the microscope to narrow our vision, because narrowness makes for precision. But narrowness also makes for a failure of purpose, for exhaustion of the will; for purpose depends upon a broad vision, a clear sight of one's objective.

  Colin Wilson

  Mean, Glasses, Sight

  4 Copy quote

• I was aggressively nonpolitical. I believed that people who make a fuss about politics do so because their heads are too empty to think about more important things. So I felt nothing but impatient contempt for Osborne's Jimmy Porter and the rest of the heroes of social protest.

  Colin Wilson

  Hero, Thinking, People

  Colin Wilson (2014). “The Outsider”, p.370, Diversion Books

  8 Copy quote

• Criminals interest me, because they're driven by the same desires as we are, but they take these disastrous shortcuts and end up in a real mess.

  Colin Wilson

  Real, Desire, Criminals

  6 Copy quote

• Our language has become a tired and inefficient thing in the hands of journalists and writers who have nothing to say.

  Colin Wilson

  Tired, Hands, Language

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

  4 Copy quote

• It seemed perfectly possible that, in spite of my certainty of my own genius, I might die of some illness, or perhaps even in a street accident, before I had ever glimpsed the meaning of life. My moods of happiness and self-confidence convinced me that I had a "destiny" to become a famous writer, and to be remembered as one of the most important thinkers of the century.

  Colin Wilson

  Self Confidence, Destiny, Important

  6 Copy quote

• It is important to grasp that boredom is one of the most common - and undesirable - consequences of 'unicameralism'. Boredom is a feeling of being 'dead inside'; that is to say, loss of contact with our instincts and feelings.

  Colin Wilson

  Loss, Boredom, Feelings

  5 Copy quote

• I'm basically a writer of ideas, and the English aren't interested in ideas. The English, I'm afraid, are totally brainless.

  Colin Wilson

  Ideas, Brainless

  7 Copy quote

• Man is brilliant at solving problems; but solving them only makes him the victim of his own childishness and laziness. It is this recognition that has made almost every major philosopher in history a pessimist.

  Colin Wilson

  Men, Laziness, Recognition

  6 Copy quote

• Phenomenology is not a philosophy; it is a philosophical method, a tool. It is like an adjustable spanner that can be used for dismantling a refrigerator or a car, or used for hammering in nails, or even for knocking somebody out.

  Colin Wilson

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Car

  "Introduction to the New Existentialism" by Colin Wilson, (p. 92), 1966.

  12 Copy quote

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