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You are born with a character it is given, a gift, as the old stories say, from the guardians upon your birth...Each person enters the world called.

James Hillman

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James Hillman
Age: 85 †
Born: 1926
Born: April 12
Died: 2011
Died: October 27
Non-Fiction Writer
Philosopher
Psychologist
Atlantic City
New Jersey
World
Called
Upon
Born
Given
Guardians
Stories
Enters
Character
Guardian
Persons
Gift
Person
Birth

More quotes by James Hillman

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From my perspective as a depth psychologist, I see that those who have a connection with story are in better shape and have better prognosis than those to whom story must be introduced.
James Hillman
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If there were a god of New York, it would be the Greek's Hermes, the Roman's Mercury. He embodies New York qualities: the quick exchange, the fastness of language and style, craftiness, the mixing of people and crossing of borders, imagination.
James Hillman
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The psyche is highly flammable material. So we are always wrapping things in asbestos, keeping our images and fantasies at arm's length because they are so full of love
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Depression opens the door to beauty of some kind.
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As Plotinus tells us, we elected the body, the parents, the place, and the circumstances that suited the soul and that, as the myth says, belongs to its necessity.
James Hillman
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The new age self-help phenomenon is pretty mushy, but it's also very American. Our history is filled with traveling preachers and quack medicine and searches for the soul. I don't see this as a new thing. I think the new age is part of a phenomenon that's been there all along.
James Hillman
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I see happiness as a by-product. I don't think you can pursue happiness. I think that phrase is one of the very few mistakes the Founding Fathers made
James Hillman
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I've found that contemporary psychology enrages me with its simplistic ideas of human life, and also its emptiness.
James Hillman
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Fear is a huge thing for older people.
James Hillman
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We cannot be studied or cured apart from the planet.
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Whether we like it or not, men have more of the offices, more of the higher jobs, more of the seats in Congress. Men need to re-examine what their power is. We need to understand how to use it.
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The easy path of aging is to become a thick-skinned, unbudging curmudgeon, a battle-ax. To grow soft and sweet is the harder way.
James Hillman
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By setting up a universe which tends to hold everything we do, see, and say in the sway of its cosmos, an archetype is best comparable with a God
James Hillman
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Beauty is something everybody longs for, needs, and tries to obtain in some way - whether through nature, or a man or a woman, or music, or whatever. The soul yearns for it. Psychology seems to have forgotten that.
James Hillman
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I sometimes get short-tempered in a public situation because I think, Oh God, I can't go back over that again. I can't put that into a two-word answer. I can't. Wherever I go, people say, Can I ask you a quick question? It's always, a quick question. Well, my answers are slow.
James Hillman
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Each person enters the world called, like an oak tree, to fulfill their soul’s agenda.
James Hillman
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We dull our lives by the way we conceive them.
James Hillman
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Each morning, we return from the dream soul trying to adjust to the day world, that moment when the two souls exchange places in the driver’s seat.
James Hillman
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You don't know what you're going to get into when you follow your bliss.
James Hillman
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We have to give value to authority. We have to give value to office, being in office, holding office.
James Hillman