The two greatest works of war mythology in the west ... are the Iliad and the Old Testament... When we turn from the Iliad and Athens to Jerusalem and the Old Testament we find a single-minded single deity with his sympathies forever on one side. And the enemy, accordingly, no matter who it may be, is handled... pretty much as though he were subhuman: not a "Thou" but an "It."

Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.

The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change.

This is an important point about symbols: they do not refer to historical events; they refer through historical events to spiritual or psychological principles and powers that are of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and that are everywhere.

I think of compassion as the fundamental religious experience and, unless that is there, you have nothing.

When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed.

What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There's always the possibility of fiasco. But there's also the possibility of bliss.