Hillman maitains that the daimon is by far more important than either nature or nuture. And parents will probably really enjoy this bit. You can alll breath a sigh of relief - your kids problems are not your fault -blame it on the daimon. He uses examples who are larger than life - Judy Garland, Josephine Baker, Manolette, Darwin. Hitler is the prime example of the "bad seed". And it does kind of ring true - some people do seem to be called to greatness they have something about them that seems more than human. Hillman also addresses the call to mediocrity which is no less valid than calls to greatness.

All in all a fascinating read and really thought provoking.

By its very definition, given by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica, beauty arrests motion. Beauty is itself a cure for psychological malaise. P.38

Moments of dejection drop us into a pool of loneliness. … Nothing seems to hold against the drop. All the networking that has interlaced our extension outward and downward into the world - family, friends, neighbors [sic], lovers, little routines, and the results of years of work - seem to count for nothing. We feel ourselves curiously depersonalized, very far away. Exiled. No connection anywhere. P.54

When we look - or rather, feel - closely into the sense of loneliness we find it is composed of several elements: nostalgia, sadness, silence, and a yearning imagination for "something else" not here, not now. … [these things] are the inmost stuff of religious and romantic poetry in many languages and cultures. They remind the acorn of its origins. P.56

Quoting Diane Eyer - Bonding is, in fact, as much as extension of ideology as it is scientific discovery. More specifically, it is part of an ideology in which mothers are seen as the prime architects of their children's lives and are blamed for whatever problems befall them, not only in childhood but through-out their adult lives. P75-6

If ever we wanted obvious proof of the daimon and its calling, we need but fall once in love. The rational sources of heredity and environment are not enough to give rise to the torrents of romantic agony. It's all you, and never do you feel more flooded with importance and more destined; nor can what you do turn out to be more demonic. P.144

Kierkegaard - along with Marx, Freud and Nietzsche - became one of [R.D.] Lang's spiritual parents, a member of the family tree that nourished his acorn and fed his intellectual fantasy. You expect less from your natural parents, and they become easier to bear once you have discovered the other family tree on which the life of your soul depends. P.165

For it is not ultimately parental control or parental chaos that children run away from; they run from the void of living in a family without any fantasy beyond shopping, keeping up the car, and routines of niceness. P.168

Mark Twain supposedly observed that the older he got the more vividly he remembered things that had not happened. … There seems, indeed, a curious need to falsify, disguise, or destroy the story of your life. P.172

If a culture's philosophy does not allow enough place for the other, give credit to the invisible, then it must squeeze itself into our psychic system in distorted form. This suggests that some psychic dysfunctions would be better located in the dysfunctional world view by which they are judged. P.184

The Greek word for fate, moira, means a share, a portion. As fate has only a portion in what happens, so the daimon, the personal, internalized aspect of moira, has only a portion in our lives, calling them but not owning them. P.194

Fate had no teleological plan, no final goal of Through a Glass, Darkly or The Magic Flute in mind. Yet the daimon's fateful vision infuses particular events with emotional importance - thrill, feverish excitement, cursing. Bergman's fate was not sealed, but signified. P.202

The acorn acts less as a personal guide with a sure long-term direction than as a moving style, an inner dynamic that gives the feeling of purpose to occasions. P.203

Necessities implacable smile says that whatever choice you make is exactly the one required by Necessity. It could not be otherwise. At the moment the decision falls, it is necessary. Before it is decided, all lies open. For this strange reason Necessity guarantees only risk. All is at risk in each decision, even though what is finally decided upon at once becomes necessary. P.210

The phenomenon of Hitler has implications bearing on our present lives as citizens. Unlike the crimes of Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, and the like, "the damages wrought by individual violence …are insignificant compared to the holocausts resulting from self-transcending devotion to collectively shared belief systems" - quote from Arthur Koestler - The Ghost in the Machine. P.215

But the loner is not alone. He or she is in communion with the daimon, drawn apart from the human by the invisibly inhuman, and attempting to create a world modelled upon the grandeur and the glamour of a world unseen but envisioned. P.242