“The myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless schema, the pious formula into which life flows when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious.”
Freud and the Future (1937)
Context: The myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless schema, the pious formula into which life flows when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious. Certainly when a writer has acquired the habit of regarding life as mythical and typical there comes a curious heightening of his artistic temper, a new refreshment to his perceiving and shaping powers, which otherwise occurs much later in life; for while in the life of the human race the mythical is an early and primitive stage, in the life of the individual it is a late and mature one.
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Thomas Mann 159
German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate 1875–1955Related quotes
“When you see a small change in your life it means its a huge change in personality and your trait”
Source: Lush

“When true myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life.”
"Myth and Archetype in Science Fiction" (1976)
Context: True myth may serve for thousands of years as an inexhaustible source of intellectual speculation, religious joy, ethical inquiry, and artistic renewal. The real mystery is not destroyed by reason. The fake one is. You look at it and it vanishes. You look at the Blond Hero — really look — and he turns into a gerbil. But you look at Apollo, and he looks back at you. The poet Rilke looked at a statue of Apollo about fifty years ago, and Apollo spoke to him. “You must change your life,” he said. When true myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life.

"Brave New Biocracy: Health Care from Womb to Tomb" NPQ: New Perspectives Quarterly, Vol. 11, Issue 1 (Winter 1994) http://brandon.multics.org/library/Ivan%20Illich/against_life.html.
Context: Homo economicus was surreptitiously taken as the emblem and analogue for all living beings. A mechanistic anthropomorphism has gained currency. Bacteria are imagined to mimic "economic" behavior and to engage in internecine competition for the scarce oxygen available in their environment. A cosmic struggle among ever more complex forms of life has become the anthropic foundational myth of the scientific age.

Source: "Quotes", Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), p. 97

The Paris Review interview (1982)

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

“Freedom is the flow of life/ It is to be part of it/ And to let life flow through you.”
Freedom: Foster It! p. 34.
Freedom: Foster it! (2004)