James Hillman Quotes

Love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.

I know my own deficiencies, one of which is that I had lived away from America for such a long time. It’s called expatriate

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

Aging is no accident. It is necessary to the human condition, intended by the soul. We become more characteristic of who we are simply by lasting into later years; the older we become, the more our true natures emerge. Thus the final years have a very important purpose: the fulfillment and confirmation of one’s character.

The transfiguration of matter occurs through wonder.

What I try to point out is the role an ordinary person can have in seeing the child’s destiny. You have to have a feeling for the child.

We vote for Perot. We think he’s a great, marvelous, honest man. We send money to his campaign, even though he is one of the richest capitalists in our culture. Imagine, sending money to Perot! It’s unbelievable, yet it’s part of that worship of individuality.

The word power has such a generally negative implication in our society. What are people talking about? Are they talking about muscles, or control?

I’m the result of upbringing, class, race, gender, social prejudices, and economics. So I’m a victim again. A result.

Character forms a life regardless of how obscurely that life is lived and how little light falls on it from the stars.

Mediocrity is no answer to violence. In fact, it probably invites violence. At least the mediocre and the violent appear together as in the old Western movies – the ruffian outlaw band shooting up main street and the little white church with the little white schoolteacher wringing her hands. To cool violence you need rhythm, humor, tempering; you need dance and rhetoric. Not therapeutic understanding.

Open your heart, your gaze, to the visitations of angels, even if the gifts they bring may not be centeredness and balance but eccentricity and a wholly unfamiliar sense of pleasure called joy.