James Hillman Quotes

There appears to be but two grand master passions or movers in the human mind, namely, love and pride. And what constitutes the beauty or deformity of a man's character is the choice he makes under which banner he determines to enlist himself. But there is a strong distinction between different degress in the same thing and a mixture of two contraries.

In other characters, it's driven by insecurity, or it's driven by fear, or - there's always a driver. And all the physical manifestations, you need your way in.

Humans can be fairly ridiculous animals.

There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?

Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as flying animals, that nevertheless rarely or never actually flew. They would also be perplexed if they encountered in our seas, lakes, rivers, and ponds, creatures defined as swimmers that never did any swimming. But they would be even more surprised to encounter a species defined as a thinking animal if, in fact, the creature very rarely indulged in actual thinking.

Of all the animals which fly in the air, walk on the land, or swim in the sea, from Paris to Peru, from Japan to Rome, the most foolish animal in my opinion is man.

I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible to civilization. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that the reformation must be worked.

Why do people shush animals? Theyve never spoken

I got to thinking one day about all those women on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night.

I try to have a balance of things you like and things you don't like about a character. But once you start that, all these scripts are like, "You play the douchebag friend of Ashton Kutcher." It's all these characters that are overconfident or hyper-masculine.

If you did everything your mind told you to do, you do some really strange stuff. You'll probably be in jail, you'll be in trouble. But, it's all about control. We all have to control our feelings. That's the thing that separates us from animals.

Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heartone of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man.

For me the most interesting characters are outwardly static, but inwardly charged by an overriding passion.

Why does a chicken coop only have two doors? ... Because if it had four doors, it would be a chicken sedan.

Speech, after all, is in some measure an expression of character, and flexibility in its use is a good way to tell your friends from the robots.

It may be that all games are silly. But then, so are humans.

Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugitive deed and word, the intimated purpose, express character.

When character is lost, rules and punishments cannot take its place.

At noon I feel as though I could devour all the elephants of Hindostan, and then pick my teeth with the spire of Strasburg cathedral; in the evening I become so sentimental that I would fain drink up the Milky Way without reflecting how indigestible I should find the little fixed stars, and by night there is the Devil himself broke loose in my head and no mistake.

What you say of the pride of giving life to an immortal soul is very fine dear, but I own I cannot enter into that: I think much more of our being like a cow or a dog at such moments: when our poor nature becomes so very animal and unecstatic

It is one of the peculiar truths of life that people often say things that they know full well are ridiculous.

I can be a snarky Asshole, or I can be sort of mentally impaired. It's very hard for me to just be normal human being.

I enjoy playing a quintessential antihero. There's something therapeutic about playing such characters. I know it sounds corny but I feel like I learn about myself when I play that characters.

As an actor, you can really play the intensity and gravity and seriousness of the moment, and just rely on the circumstances being funny. The joke is kind of the situation you're in, or the way you're reacting to something, as opposed to the characters just saying something witty.

I was still afraid of him, I knew, but in a different way - I was no longer a child, afraid of the threat my terrifying father posed to my safety. I was a man, afraid of the threat he posed to my character, to my future, to my identity.