Joseph Campbell Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Joseph Campbell on Wise Famous Quotes.
Life is a guy trying to play a violin solo in public, while learning the music and his instrument at the same time.
In the absence of an effective general mythology, each of us has his private, unrecognized, rudimentary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dreams.
The quest for fire occurred not because anyone knew what the practical uses for fire would be, but because it was fascinating.
We are kept out of the Garden by our own fear and desire in relation to what we think to be the goods of our life.
If you want to understand what's most important to a society, don't examine its art or literature, simply look at its biggest buildings.
Humor is the touchstone of the truly mythological as distinct from the more literal-minded and sentimental theological mood.
When before the beauty of a sunset or a mountain, you pause and exclaim, 'Ah,' you are participating in divinity.
Preachers err by trying to talk people into belief; better they reveal the radiance of their own discovery.
The hero, therefore, is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations.
The schizophrenic is drowning in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight. Edgar Cayce made the same observation in his readings
The conquest of fear yields the courage of life. That is the cardinal initiation of every heroic adventure
fearlessness and achievement.
fearlessness and achievement.
You have to have a feeling for where you are. You've got only one life to live and you don't have to live it for six people. Pay attention to it.
I think the person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money [not for purpose or passion]- has turned himself into a slave.
God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.
Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.
I think of compassion as the fundamental religious experience and, unless that is there, you have nothing.
When you are on your path, and it is truly your path, doors will open for you where there were no doors for someone else.
Marriage is not a simple love affair, it's an ordeal, and the ordeal is the sacrifice of ego to a relationship in which two have become one.
If a being from another world were to ask you, "How can I learn what it's like to be human?" a good answer would be, "Study mythology.
Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human manifestation ...
the society that cherishes and keeps its myths alive will be nourished from the soundest, richest strata of the human spirit.
Not all who hesitate are lost. The psyche has many secrets in reserve. And these are not disclosed unless required.
Some things die after they born, others born after they die.
myths are public dreams, dreams are privet myths ...
myths are public dreams, dreams are privet myths ...
The realms of the gods and demons - heaven, purgatory, hell - are of the substance of dreams. Myth, in this view, is the dream of the world.
In marriage you are not sacrificing yourself to the other person. You are sacrificing yourself to the relationship.
What is a god? A god is a personification of a motivating power of a value system that functions in human life and in the universe.
I don't believe in being interested in a subject just because it's said to be important. I believe in being caught by it somehow or other.
One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that.
With passion you want to possess. The conversion of passion into compassion is the whole problem of marriage.
Gods suppressed become devils, and often it is these devils whom we first encounter when we turn inward.
Suddenly you're ripped into being alive. And life is pain, and life is suffering, and life is horror, but my god you're alive and its spectacular.
Both the artist and the lover know that perfection is not loveable. It is the clumsiness of a fault that makes a person lovable.
Willed introversion, in fact, is one of the classic implements of creative genius and can be employed as a deliberate device.
[M]yths are not invented as stories are. Myths are inspired-they really are. They come from the same realm that dream comes from.
If you want to know what a given society believes in, look at what its largest buildings are devoted to.
If you want to see what a society really believes in, look at what the biggest buildings on the horizon are dedicated to.