248 Quotes by James Hillman

What ages is not merely your functions and organs, but the whole of your nature, that particular person you have come to be and already were years ago.

Words are like pillows: if put correctly they ease pain.

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.

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.

I think we’re miserable partly because we have only one god, and that’s economics.

When they talk about family values, it’s in a repressive way, as if our American tradition were only the Puritan tradition or the 19th century oppressive tradition. The Christian tradition.

I don’t think you can revive traditions on purpose.

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.

Aptitude can show calling, but it isn’t the only indicator. Ineptitude or dysfunction may reveal calling more than talent, curiously enough.