Archetype Quotes

• Archetypes are universal, and, in subtle or extravagant ways, interchangeable.

  Tanith Lee

  Extravagance, Way, Subtle

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• The psyche is the inward experience of the human body, which is essentially the same in all human beings, with the same organs, the same instincts, the same impulses, the same conflicts, the same fears. Out of this common ground have come what Jung has called the archetypes, which are the common ideas of myths.

  Joseph Campbell

  Ideas, Inward, Body

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.60, Anchor

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• If you know your archetypes - and not just yours, if you know how to perceive the world in archetypes, through archetypes - everything changes. Everything. Because you have two things: you can see through one eye which is impersonal, and through the other, which is personal. That's the way the game is written down here.

  Caroline Myss

  Eye, Games, Two

  "A Conversation with Caroline Myss". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• The Gods and Goddesses of myth, legend and fairy tale represent archetypes, real potencies and potentialities deep within the psyche, which, when allowed to flower permit us to be more fully human.

  Margot Adler

  Real, Flower, Legends

  Margot Adler (2006). “Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America”, p.38, Penguin

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• The primordial image, or archetype, is a figure--be it a daemon, a human being, or a process--that constantly recurs in the course of history and appears wherever creative fantasy is freely expressed. Essentially, therefore, it is a mythological figure. . . . In each of these images there is a little piece of human psychology and human fate, a remnant of the joys and sorrows that have been repeated countless times in our ancestral history. . . .

  Carl Jung

  Fate, Creative, Joy

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• All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes.

  Carl Jung

  Powerful, Ideas, Most Powerful

  Carl Gustav Jung (1981). “The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Structure and dynamics of the psyche”

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• Any legend, any creature, any symbol we ever stumble on, already exists in a vast cosmic reservoir where archetypes wait. Shapes looming outside our Platonic cave. We naturally believe ourselves clever and wise, so advanced, and those who came before us so naïve and simple...when all we truly do is echo the order of the universe, as it guides us.

  Guillermo del Toro

  Wise, Clever, Believe

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• Archetypes resemble the beds of rivers: dried up because the water has deserted them, though it may return at any time. An archetype is something like an old watercourse along which the water of life flowed for a time, digging a deep channel for itself. The longer it flowed the deeper the channel, and the more likely it is that sooner or later the water will return.

  Carl Jung

  Rivers, Water Of Life, May

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• You are far more than your personality, more than your habits, more than your achievements. You are an infinitely complex human being with stories and myths and dreams- and ambitions of cosmic proportions. Don't waste time underestimating yourself. Dream big... Use the energy of your archetype to express the true reason you were born. Life was never meant to be safe. It was meant to be lived right to the end.

  Caroline Myss

  Dream, Ambition, Personality

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• In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

  Carl Jung

  Thoughtful, Order, Secret Love

  Carl Gustav Jung (1981). “The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious”, p.32, Princeton University Press

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• The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

  Carl Jung

  Life, Thoughtful, Heartache

  Carl Gustav Jung (2001). “Modern Man in Search of a Soul”, p.67, Psychology Press

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• Learn the true topography; the monstrous and wonderful archetypes are not inside you, not inside your consciousness; you are inside them, trapped and howling to get out

  R. A. Lafferty

  Learning, Topography, Consciousness

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• As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

  Carl Jung

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  Memories, Dreams, Reflections ch. 11 (1962)

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• I really believe that an awakening, a greater perspective on our lives and existence is happening. It's really the firing of archetypes that are already built into our brains, we just are able to awaken to a point where we can see a greater beauty in the world, a greater connection and sense of well being. This is what the mystics speak about. The insights fire us up into a greater consciousness on the planet. So it is a greater consciousness at the same time and a greater awareness of our spiritual nature. That is what the 'aha' is.

  James Redfield

  Spiritual, Believe, Fire

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• We all recall the cruel stepmother in fairy tales. That archetype is often a necessary element in a fairy tale so that the heroine/hero can become a person of character and power. Stories of heroes and heroines often begin with a wound or loss or injustice and end with heroic acts of restoration.

  David Richo

  Hero, Character, Loss

  David Richo (2007). “The Power of Coincidence: How Life Shows Us What We Need to Know”, p.17, Shambhala Publications

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• We like our archetypes and heroes to be what they are at face value. And life doesn't work out like that

  Laura Dern

  Hero, Firefighter, Work Out

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• Archetypes, in spite of their conservative nature, are not static but in a continuous dramatic flux. Thus the self as a monad or continuous unit would be dead. But it lives inasmuch as it splits and unites again. There is no energy without opposites!

  Carl Jung

  Self, Opposites, Energy

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• Angels and demons were identical--interchangeable archetypes--all a matter of polarity. The guardian angel who conquered your enemy in battle was perceived by your enemy as a demon destroyer.

  Dan Brown

  Angel, Enemy, Battle

  Dan Brown (2010). “The Lost Symbol Illustrated edition”, p.44, Random House

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• Man, whose organization is regarded as the highest, departs from the vertebrate archetype; and it is because the study of anatomy is usually commenced from, and often confined to, his structure, that a knowledge of the archetype has been so long hidden from anatomists.

  Charles Lyell

  Knowledge, Science, Men

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• When we're good, we're very, very good, and when we're bad, we're horrid. This is not news, because we're so much more inventive and we have two hands, the left and the right. That is how we think. It's all over our literature, and it's all over the way we arrange archetypes, the good version, the bad version, the god, the devil, the Abel, the Cain, you name it. We arrange things in pairs like that because we know about ourselves.

  Margaret Atwood

  Thinking, Two, Hands

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• Unconscious of your story, you are in its grasp; but with consciousness, an alchemical process begins: The solidity of the complex dissolves and you can open up to the arrival of a new archetype, the birth of a new cycle of life. In the shadow, then, lies our myth and our fate.

  Connie Zweig

  Life, Lying, Fate

  Connie Zweig, Steven Wolf (2009). “Romancing the Shadow: A Guide to Soul Work for a Vital, Authentic Life”, p.314, Wellspring/Ballantine

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• Thinking in mythological terms helps to put you in accord with the inevitables of this vale of tears. You learn to recognize the positive values in what appear to be the negative moments and aspects of your life. The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.

  Joseph Campbell

  Adventure, Thinking, Tears

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.206, Anchor

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• There are as many archetypes as there are typical situations in life. Endless repetition has engraved these experiences into our psychic constitution, not in the forms of images filled with content, but at first only as forms without content, representing merely the possibility of a certain type of perception and action.

  Carl Jung

  Situations In Life, Psychics, Psychology

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• I've always been an admirer of women who walk the line of being very feminine and powerful at the same time. That has always been my archetype because too many powerful women, I fend intimidating and frightening, and I never want to scare anybody. I want to be warm and cuddly and yet, powerful at the same time.

  Doreen Virtue

  Powerful, Scare, Lines

  "Doreen Virtue: the oil spill". Interview with Susan Gregg, www.beliefnet.com.

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• Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power.

  William Moulton Marston

  Girl, Long, Wonder Woman

  "The Secret History of Wonder Woma". Book by Jill Lepore, 2014.

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