Quotes from Colin Wilson

I've read Joyce and Sartre and Beckett and the rest, and every atom in me rejects what they say. They strike me as liars and fools. I don't think they're dishonest so much as hopelessly tired and defeated.

As to Gurdjieff's power to renew his own energies, its essence had been understood by psychologists of the nineteenth century, decades before the age of Freud and Jung. William James speaks about it in an important essay called 'The Energies of Man'.

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.

She admitted that his nerves were ragged. 'But why?' asked Reich. Surely things were going excellently for the company. 'Oh yes,' she said. 'But when a man is President of a concern as big as A.I.U., he gets into the habit of worrying, and sometimes can't stop.

the Buddhist scripture expresses it: Those who refuse to discriminate might as well be dead

Faculty X is the ability to grasp the reality not simply of other times and places, but of the present moment as well.

During the course of an ordinary day, we are constrained by a kind of natural caution, an anticipation of possible difficulties and problems, which tint our consciousness a shade of grey. Talking and thinking about peak experiences makes us realize how lucky we are, and that we can dispense with the caution and constraint. It is like realizing that you have more money in the bank than you thought.

What if the 'brutal thunderclap of halt' takes the form of the choice, Dishonesty or insanity?

I think everyone should love life above everything else in the world,' Alyosha tells him. 'Love life regardless of the meaning of it?' 'Certainly—it must be regardless of logic—'it's only then one can understand its meaning.

Man is as much a slave to his immediate surroundings now as he was when he lived in tree-huts. Give him the highest, the most exciting thoughts about man's place in the universe, the meaning of history; they can all be snuffed out in a moment if he wants his dinner, or feels irritated by a child squalling on a bus.

A young farm labourer passed me. I suddenly understood what Traherne meant when he said that men looked to him like angels. Again, it was a matter of seeing through to the inward vitality, the essence—what Boehme called the 'signature'. I smiled at the farm labourer, and he smiled back and said: 'Mornin' sir.' I felt suddenly very happy.

The Outsider's case against society is very clear. All men and women have these dangerous, unnamable impulses, yet they keep up a pretence, to themselves, to others; their respectability, their philosophy, their religion, are all attempts to gloss over, to make look civilized and rational something that is savage, unorganized, irrational. He is an Outsider because he stands for Truth.

Man is subordinate to certain absolute values; there is no delight in the human form leading to its natural reproduction; it is always distorted to fit the more abstract forms which convey intense religious emotion.

This is one of the most urgent problems for civilized man. He has created civilization to give himself security. Security for what? For boredom? His chief problem seems to be that most human beings need a certain amount of challenge, of external stimulus, to stop them from sinking into the blank stare and blank consciousness of the idiot.

It doesn't help an animal to cry when it's in pain. But it does it.

Our findings point more and more to the conclusion that the Outsider is not a freak, but is only more sensitive than the 'sanguine and healthy-minded

And in fact this insight had often been confirmed by experience. I had frequently noted that I became accident-prone when I had allowed myself to become tired and discouraged, and that some instinct for avoiding accidents seemed to be aroused when I was feeling fully alive. I

It seemed to me that a solution must be found. Here, my natural optimism was to my advantage. For when I read Sartre or Camus or Graham Greene, I experienced a temperamental rejection of their pessimism. I suspected that their ultimate picture might be distorted by a certain self-pity or lack of discipline—or, in the case of Greene, by a certain congenital lack of vitality. I suspected that if the problem left them defeated, it was because they had not attacked it hard enough.

It is a long way from Mr. Polly's discovery (If you don't like your life you can change it) to: There is no way out or round or through.

It was unthinkable that the Soviet Union admit that a serial killer was loose.

Alas, the day comes of the most contemptible man who can no longer condemn himself.... Then the earth will have grown small, and upon it shall hop the Last Man who makes all things small; his kind is inexterminable, like the ground flea. The last man lives longest.

Urizen is the chief villain always, because Urizen is not merely intellect; he is also personality, identity, the Spectre. As soon as man begins to think, he forms a notion of who he is. If man were entirely body or emotions, he would have no conception of his identity, consequently he could never become unbalanced like Nijinsky, Lawrence, Van Gogh. It is Urizen who starts the trouble. The Bible recounts the same legend when it ascribes the first discord in the universe to Lucifer and his pride

he has explored life from end to end and found it all hollow, when actually he is only constipated with his own worthless-ness. He fails to apply his intellect to the question, Why do all living things prefer life to death?

someone condemned to death says, or thinks an hour before his death, that if he had to live on a high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only have room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than die at once. Only to live, to live and live. Life, whatever it may be...