120 Quotes by Colin Wilson

Lei, disse, era cattolico, vero? No. Anglicano? No. Sono esistenzialista. Davvero? Ma, uh… io parlavo di… religione. Lo so. Anch’io. Be’, ma… non credo di aver mai sentito parlare di questa setta. È nuova? Non proprio. Chi l’ha fondata? Un danese, un certo Kierkegaard. E credono nel potere di redenzione di Gesù Cristo? Kierkegaard di sicuro ci credeva.

The vitality of the ordinary members of society is dependent on its Outsiders. Many Outsiders unify themselves, realize themselves as poets or saints. Others remain tragically divided and unproductive, but even they supply soul-energy to society; it is their strenuousness that purifies thought and prevents the bourgeois world from foundering under its own dead-weight; they are society’s spiritual dynamos.

In his embryonic form, as the Outsider, he does not know himself well enough to understand the driving force behind his feelings. That is why his chief concern is with thinking, not with doing.

The cultural problem was 'the fallacy of insignificance', and it was a philosophical form of this fallacy that had somehow landed existentialism in a cul de sac.

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. Young W.B. Yeats wanted a fairy land where 'the lonely of heart is withered away.' Dowson and Thompson and Beddoes were 'half in love with easeful death':They are not long, the days of wine and rosesOut of a misty dreamOur path emerges for a while, then closesWithin a dream.

Defeat is always self-chosen.

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

I never write purely for the fun of it. I write as a mathematician uses a sheet of paper for doing calculations: because I think better that way

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.