Joseph Campbell Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• Marriage is not a love affair. A love affair has to do with immediate personal satisfaction. Marriage is an ordeal; it means yielding, time and again. That's why it's a sacrament; You give up your personal simplicity to participate in a relationship. And when you're giving, you're not giving to the other person; you're giving to the relationship.

  Joseph Campbell

  Giving Up, Mean, Simplicity

  39 Copy quote

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

  Joseph Campbell

  Life, Darkness, Lost

  44 Copy quote

• 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.

  Joseph Campbell

  Motivational, Pain, Suffering

  80 Copy quote

• I have found that you have only to take that one step toward the gods, and they will then take ten steps toward you. That step, the heroic first step of the journey, is out of, or over the edge of, your boundaries, and it often must be taken before you know that you will.

  Joseph Campbell

  Taken, Journey, Firsts

  32 Copy quote

• The conquest of fear yields the courage of life. That is the cardinal initiation of every heroic adventure-- fearlessness and achievement.

  Joseph Campbell

  Adventure, Yield, Achievement

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.188, Anchor

  14 Copy quote

• The eternal principle, which never was born, never will die: it is in all things: it is in you now. You are the wave on the face of the ocean. When the wave is gone, is the water gone? Has anything happened? Nothing has happened. It is a play, a game, a dance.

  Joseph Campbell

  Ocean, Games, Play

  40 Copy quote

• God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.

  Joseph Campbell

  God, Simple, Intellectual

  63 Copy quote

• Follow your bliss. The heroic life is living the individual adventure. There is no security in following the call to adventure. Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be.

  Joseph Campbell

  Adventure, Outcomes, Heroic

  36 Copy quote

• You don't ask what a dance means. You enjoy it. You don't ask what the world means. You enjoy it. You don't ask what you mean. You enjoy it.

  Joseph Campbell

  Mean, World, Enjoy

  Joseph Campbell (2011). “Myths to Live By”, p.58, Joseph Campbell Foundation

  52 Copy quote

• Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end. The exclusivism of there being only one way in which we can be saved, the idea that there is a single religious group that is in sole possession of the truth—that is the world as we know it that must pass away. What is the kingdom? It lies in our realization of the ubiquity of the divine presence in our neighbors, in our enemies, in all of us.

  Joseph Campbell

  Religious, Lying, Ignorance

  "Thou Art that: Transforming Religious Metaphor".

  69 Copy quote

• One of the great disadvantages of a literary or scriptural tradition like the biblical one is that a deity or context of deities becomes crystallized, petrified at a certain time and place. The deity doesn’t continue to grow, expand, or take into account new cultural forces and new realizations in the sciences, and the result is this make-believe conflict we have in our culture between science and religion.

  Joseph Campbell

  Believe, Biblical, Culture

  53 Copy quote

• Eternity is not future or past. Eternity is a dimension of now. It is a dimension of the human spirit -- which is eternal. Find that eternal dimension in yourself, and you will ride through time, and throughout the whole length of your days.

  Joseph Campbell

  Past, Dimensions, Spirit

  Joseph Campbell, David Kudler (2004). “Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation”, p.18, New World Library

  43 Copy quote

• I don’t think there is any such thing as an ordinary mortal. Everybody has his own possibility of rapture in the experience of life. All he has to do is recognize it and then cultivate it and get going with it. I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I’ve never met an ordinary man, woman, or child.

  Joseph Campbell

  Life, Children, Women

  Joseph Campbell, Bill D. Moyers (1988). “The Power of Myth”, Harmony

  62 Copy quote

• Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human manifestation.

  Joseph Campbell

  Secret, Energy, Cosmos

  Joseph Campbell (2008). “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, p.1, New World Library

  14 Copy quote

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

  Joseph Campbell

  Religious, Thinking, Compassion

  66 Copy quote

• Sacred space and sacred time and something joyous to do is all we need. Almost anything then becomes a continuous and increasing joy. What you have to do, you do with play. I think a good way to conceive of sacred space is as a playground. If what you're doing seems like play, you are in it. But you can't play with my toys, you have to have your own. Your life should have yielded some. Older people play with life experiences and realizations or with thoughts they like to entertain. In my case, I have books I like to read that don't lead anywhere.

  Joseph Campbell

  Life, Time, Fun

  30 Copy quote

• There are something like 18 billion cells in the brain alone. There are no two brains alike; there are no two hands alike; there are no two human beings alike. You can take your instructions and your guidance from others, but you must find your own path.

  Joseph Campbell

  Cells, Hands, Two

  Joseph Campbell (2009). “Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation: Easyread Large Edition”, p.185, ReadHowYouWant.com

  41 Copy quote

• It is within you that the divine lives.

  Joseph Campbell

  Love, Life, Divine

  24 Copy quote

• When you find a writer who really is saying something to you, read everything that writer has written and you will get more education and depth of understanding out of that than reading a scrap here and a scrap there and elsewhere. Then go to people who influenced that writer, or those who were related to him, and your world builds together in an organic way that is really marvelous.

  Joseph Campbell

  Reading, People, Understanding

  Joseph Campbell (1990). “The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work”, p.53, New World Library

  15 Copy quote

• The goal of life is rapture. Art is the way we experience it.

  Joseph Campbell

  Art, Goal, Way

  28 Copy quote

• The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves.

  Joseph Campbell

  People, Listening, World

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.181, Anchor

  26 Copy quote

• You know the rule: If you are falling, dive. Do the thing that has to be done.

  Joseph Campbell

  Fall, Done, Knows

  11 Copy quote

• Change the focus of the eye. When you have done that, then the end of the world as you formerly knew it will have occurred, and you will experience the radiance of the divine presence everywhere, here and now.

  Joseph Campbell

  Eye, Focus, Done

  42 Copy quote

• You can't have creativity unless you leave behind the bounded, the fixed, all the rules

  Joseph Campbell

  Creativity, Fixed, Behinds

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.194, Anchor

  14 Copy quote

• Perfection isn't human. Human beings are not perfect. What evokes our love--and I mean love, not lust--is the imperfection of the human being. So, when the imperfection of the real person peaks through, say, 'This is a challenge to my compassion.' Then make a try, and something might begin to get going.

  Joseph Campbell

  Love, Real, Mean

  54 Copy quote

Page 4 of 23

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin