116 quotes
Art is thought, and thought only gives the world an appearance of order to anyone weak enough to be convinced by its show.
The Outsider (1956)
In the mid nineteenth century, the typical murderer was a drunken illiterate; a hundred years later the typical murderer regards himself as a thinking man.
The Encyclopedia of Modern Murder 1962-1983 (1983)
The characteristic of the really great writer is the ability of his mind to to suddenly leap beyond his ordinary human values, into sudden perception of universal values.
Poetry and Mysticism (1969)
Could it be that sexual perversion and romanticism sprang from the same longing for distant horizons?
The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders (1988)
The unbeliever walks for a quadrillion miles, yet one moments of reality makes up for it.
The Outsider (1956)
The individual begins that long effort as an Outsider; he may finish it as a saint.
The Outsider (1956)
The vitality of the ordinary members of society is dependent on its Outsiders.
The Outsider (1956)
In order to realise his possibilities, man must believe in an open future; he must have a vision of something worth doing.
The Outsider may be an artist, but the artist is not necessarily an Outsider.
The Outsider (1956)
It is the fallacy of all intellectuals to believe that intellect can grasp life. It cannot, because it works in terms of symbols and language.
Introduction to the New Existentialism (1966)
When we are lulled into somnolence by lack of challenge every molehill tends to become a mountain, every minor inconvenience an intolerable imposition.
Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment (1969)
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.
The Outsider (1956)
God is Divine Goodness, and Jesus is Divine Wisdom, and Goodness has to be approached through Wisdom.
The Occult: A History (1971)
The mystical impulse in men is somehow a desire to possess the universe. In women, it's a desire to be possessed.
The Black Room (1975)
Pessimism is a leaden weight around the feet. Defeat is always self-chosen.
The God of the Labyrinth (1970)
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.
Mysteries (1978)
The outsider, Haller says, is a self-divided man; being self-divided, his chief desire is to be unified. He is selfish as a man with a lifelong raging toothache.
The Outsider (1956)
The Outsider has his proper place in the Order of Society, as the impractical dreamer.
The Outsider (1956)
Barbusse has shown us that the Outsider is a man who cannot live in the comfortable, insulated world of the bourgeois, accepting what he sees and touches as reality.
The Outsider (1956)
In refusing to face evil, Sinclair has gained nothing and lost a great deal; the Buddhist scripture expenses it: those who refuse to discriminate might as well be dead.
The Outsider (1956)