Colin Wilson Quotes

The individual begins that long effort as an Outsider; he may finish it as a saint.

Humanism is only another name for spiritual laziness, or a vague half-creed adopted by men of science and logicians whose heads are too occupied with the world of mathematics and physics to worry about religious categories.

In most men, the conscious and the unconscious being hardly ever make contact; consequently the conscious aim is to make himself as comfortable as possible with as little effort as possible. But there are other men, whom we have been calling, for convenience, ‘Outsiders’, whose conscious and unconscious being keep in closer contact, and the conscious mind is forever aware of the urge to care about ‘more abundant life’, and care less about comfort and stability and the rest of the notions that are so dear to the bourgeois.

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 men who love living.

Most men have nothing in their heads but their physical needs; put them on a desert island with nothing to occupy their minds and they would go insane. They lack real motive. The curse of civilization is boredom.

Self-expression is impossible in relation with other men; their self-expression interferes with it. The greatest heights of self-expression in poetry, music, painting – are achieved by men who are supremely alone.

The Outsider wants to cease to be an Outsider. He wants to be ‘balanced'. He would like to achieve a vividness of sense-perception (Lawrence, Van Gogh, Hemingway) He would also like to understand the human soul and its working and, be ‘possessed’ by a Will topower, to more life. (Barbusse and Mitya Karamazov) He would like to escape triviality forever. Above all, he would like to know how to express himself because that is the means by which he can get to know himself and hi unknown possibilities.

The unbeliever walks for a quadrillion miles, yet one moments of reality makes up for it.

The Outsider is always unhappy, but he is an agent that ensures the happiness for millions of 'Insiders'.

Behind man lies the abyss, nothingness; the Outsider knows this; it is his business to sink claws of iron into life to grasp it tighter than the indifferent bourgeois, to build, to Will, in spite of the abyss.

Normally man’s mind is composed only of a consciousness of his immediate needs, which is to say that this consciousness at any moment can be defined as ‘’his awareness of his own power to satisfy those needs.’’ He thinks in terms of what he intends to do in half an hour’s time, a day’s time, a month’s time an no more. He never asks himself: what are the ‘’limits’’ of my powers? In a sense, he is like a man who has a fortune is the bank, who never asks himself, How much money have I got, but only, Have I enough for a pound of cheese, a new tie, etc.

These men traveling down to the City in the morning, reading their newspapers or staring at advertisements above the opposite seats, they have no doubt of who they are. Inscribe on the placard in place of the advertisement for corn-plasters, Elliot's lines: <div class="center" style="width: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;">We are the hollow men</div>

This is the Outsider's extremity. He does not prefer not to believe; he doesn't like feeling that futility gets the last word in the universe; his human nature would like to find something it can answer to with complete assent. But honesty prevents his accepting a solution that he cannot reason about.

The Outsider's miseries are the prophet's teething pains. He retreats into his room, like a spider in a dark corner; he lives alone, wishes to avoid people.

The Outsider cannot accept life as it is, who cannot consider his own existence or anyone else's necessary. He sees 'too deep and too much'. It is still a question of self-expression.