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Yet its essence was the certitude that his life was not totally at the mercy of chance. Somehow, it was more important than that. This sense of power inside his head — which he could intensify by pulling a face and wrinkling up the muscles of his forehead — aroused a glow of optimism, an expectation of exciting events. He knew that for him, fate held something special in store.

— Colin Wilson Spider World: The Desert (1987)

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Luck

More quotes by Colin Wilson

I had never doubted my own abilities, but I was quite prepared to believe that "the world" would decline to recognize them.

Postscript to the Outsider (1967)

What can characterize the Outsider is a sense of strangeness, or unreality.

The Outsider (1956)

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

Art is naturally concerned with man in his existential aspect, not in his scientific aspect.

The Strength To Dream (1961)

Faculty X is simply that latent power in human beings possess to reach beyond the present.

The Occult: A History (1971)

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In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.

Louis Pasteur

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night (1601)

O Fortune, cruellest of heavenly powers,
Why make such game of this poor life of ours?

Horace Satires (-35)

Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.

Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (1776)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Colin Wilson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.