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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
Person
Birth
World
Called
Upon
Born
Given
Guardians
Stories
Enters
Character
Guardian
Persons
Gift

More quotes by James Hillman

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It's important to ask yourself, How am I useful to others? What do people want from me? That may very well reveal what you are here for.
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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Of course, a culture as manically and massively materialistic as ours creates materialistic behavior in its people, especially in those people who've been subjected to nothing but the destruction of imagination that this culture calls education, the destruction of autonomy it calls work, and the destruction of activity it calls entertainment.
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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I don't think you can revive traditions on purpose.
James Hillman
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I don't think anything changes until ideas change.
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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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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Many people nowadays who discover that they have a major symptom, whether psychological or physical, begin to study it. They get drawn very deeply into the area of their trouble. They want to know more than their doctor. That's a curious thing, and not at all the way it used to be.
James Hillman
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The idea of death robs inquiry of its passionate vitality and empties our efforts of their purpose by coming to one predestined conclusion, death. Why inquire if you already know the answer?
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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Too many people have been analyzing their pasts, their childhoods, their memories, their parents, and realizing that it doesn't do anything-or that it doesn't do enough.
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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People used to trust their doctor. They went to an expert. Now people have new ideas and are thinking for themselves. That's a very important change in our collective psychology.
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
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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
James Hillman
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It's not enough just to be a mother. It's not only the social pressure on mothers by certain kinds of feminism and other sources. There is also economic pressure on them.
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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We dull our lives by the way we conceive them.
James Hillman
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The gift of an image is that it provides a place to watch your soul.
James Hillman