Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James Hillman
Age: 85 †
Born: 1926
Born: April 12
Died: 2011
Died: October 27
Non-Fiction Writer
Philosopher
Psychologist
Atlantic City
New Jersey
Arms
Psyche
Full
Highly
Always
Length
Things
Images
Love
Keeping
Flammable
Fantasy
Asbestos
Material
Wrapping
Materials
Fantasies

More quotes by James Hillman

Image
We dull our lives by the way we conceive them.
James Hillman
Image
Loss means losing what was. We want to change but we don't want to lose. Without time for loss, we don't have time for soul.
James Hillman
Image
I tend to think that you fulfill your own destiny, whether you realize it or not.
James Hillman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We need to get back to trusting our emotional rapport with children, to seeing a child's beauty and singling that child out. That's how the mentor system works - you're caught up in the fantasy of another person. Your imagination and their come together.
James Hillman
Image
Each person enters the world called, like an oak tree, to fulfill their soul’s agenda.
James Hillman
Image
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
Image
Art, for example, becomes art therapy. When patients make music, it becomes music therapy. When the arts are used for therapy in this way, they are degraded to a secondary position.
James Hillman
Image
Psychology is ultimately mythology, the study of the stories of the soul.
James Hillman
Image
Follow the lead of your symptoms, for there’s usually a myth in the mess, and a mess is an expression of soul.
James Hillman
Image
You don't know what you're going to get into when you follow your bliss.
James Hillman
Image
The capacity for people to kid themselves is huge. Living on illusions or delusions, and the re-establishing of these illusions or delusions requires a big effort to keep them from being seen through. But a very old idea is at work behind our current state of affairs: enantiodromia, or the Greek notion of things turning into their opposite.
James Hillman
Image
The gift of an image is that it provides a place to watch your soul.
James Hillman
Image
We cannot be studied or cured apart from the planet.
James Hillman
Image
I don't think anything changes until ideas change. The usual American viewpoint is to believe that something is wrong with the person.
James Hillman
Image
Depression opens the door to beauty of some kind.
James Hillman
Image
I don't think anything changes until ideas change.
James Hillman
Image
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
Image
Economics is a slave-driver. No one has free time no one has any leisure.
James Hillman