Love is generally confused with dependence; but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence.
Rollo MayRead
A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Myths help us understand and find meaning in an otherwise chaotic world.
In this quote, Rollo May expresses the idea that myths serve as crucial narratives that provide order and meaning to human life. In a world filled with confusion and senselessness, these myths act as tools that help individuals and cultures derive significance from their experiences and existence, thereby giving a sense of purpose and understanding.
Themes
MythMeaningExistenceNarrativeSenseless
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion about literature, you might reference this quote to highlight the importance of storytelling.
More from Rollo May
All quotes βTo love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive - to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and an intensity of consciousness we did not know was possible before
Rollo MayRead
Terrorism and the whole drug scene are vivid examples of the fact that what persons abhor most of all in life is the possibility that they will not matter.
Rollo MayRead
Humor is the healthy way of feeling "distance" between one's self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one's problem with perspective.
Rollo MayRead
Beauty is the experience that gives us a sense of joy and a sense of peace simultaneously.
Rollo MayRead
The poet, like the lover, is a menace on the assembly line.
Rollo MayRead
Similar quotes
Use of a mentally ill person's involuntary confession is antithetical to the notion of fundamental fairness embodied in the due process clause.
William J. BrennanRead
I dread our own power, and our own ambition; I dread our being too much dreaded... We may say that we shall not abuse this astonishing, and hitherto unheard-of-power. But every other nation will think we shall abuse it. It is impossible but that, sooner or later, this state of things must produce a combination against us which may end in our ruin.
Edmund BurkeRead
But when the group is literally capable of changing our perceptions, and when to stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection, then the health of these institutions seems far more vulnerable than we think.
Susan CainRead
The individual is the true reality of life. A cosmos in himself, he does not exist for the State, nor for that abstraction called "society," or the "nation," which is only a collection of individuals.
Emma GoldmanRead
This might explain why Obama gave billions to Wall Street crooks, and dragged the Iraq and Afghan wars on and on._x000D_ _x000D_ Happily for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing... We have ceased to be a nation under law but instead a homeland where the withered Bill of Rights, like a dead trumpet vine, clings to our pseudo-Roman columns.
Gore VidalRead
Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.
Lord ActonRead