Joseph Campbell Quotations

Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.

Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called "the love of your fate." Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, "This is what I need." It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment-not discouragement-you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.

If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.

Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.

I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.

When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you're sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship.

Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.

When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.

When people get married because they think it's a long-time love affair, they'll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is a recognition of a spiritual identity.

Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes?

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.

Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.

I think the person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money - has turned himself into a slave.

I don't have to have faith, I have experience.

Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.

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

The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.

What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else.

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.

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.

We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.

Love thine enemies because they are the instruments to your destiny.

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

Heroism is a matter of integrity--becoming more and more at each step ourselves.

Original Experience has not been interpreted for you, and so youve got to work out life for yourself. Either you can take it or you cant. You dont have to go far off the interpreted path to find yourself in very difficult situations. The courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience that is the heros deed.

I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

When you see the Earth from space, you don't see any divisions of nation-states there. This may be the symbol of the new mythology to come; this is the country we will celebrate, and these are the people we are one with.

The demon that you can swallow gives you its power, and the greater lifes pain, the greater lifes reply.

When Boeing goes down, it goes down for several years,

You know, when real trouble comes your humanity is awakened. The fundamental human experience is that of compassion.

A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.

Whenever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or place. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history, mythology is absurd.

Words are always qualifications and limitations. That's why it is a peak experience to break past all that, every now and then, and to realize, ""Oh...... ah.....

When you make a sacrifice in marriage, you're sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship.

At such moments, you realize that you and the other are, in fact, one. It's a big realization. Survival is the second law of life. The first is that we are all one.

When you follow your bliss... doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors; and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else.

We do not think the Boeing IAM workers will strike when their contract expires on Sept. 2.

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I think that what we're really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive.

Our demons are out own limitations, which shut us off from the realization of the ubiquity of the spirit...each of these demons is conquered in a vision quest.

I had my heart set on three things: One, the choral office; two, the habit; and community life. We spend a lot of time together. We work together, eat together, pray together,

If you assume these 17,000 guys go away and never come back, it'd make a difference. But if they come back in two weeks rather than one week, I don't see it making a difference. They don't even have a strike fund. I'm a long way from getting worried.

If you can see your path laid outin front of you step by step, you knowit's not your path. Your own path youmake with every step you take. That'swhy it's your path.

If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else.

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track, which has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living

I've heard youngsters use some of George Lucas' terms -- "the Force" and "the dark side." So it must be hitting somewhere. It's a good sound teaching, I would say.

Smiths' share price targets range from down 4 percent to 20 gain, highlighting a debate about what Smiths should be worth.

Everybody's going to be looking at these little bits and pieces and deciding what they like and don't like. There's enough attractive pieces in that business that quite a few people will express an interest.

If you realize what the real problem is - losing yourself - you realize that this itself is the ultimate trial.

The warrior's approach is to say ""yes"" to life: ""yea"" to it all.

The world is full of people that have stopped listening to themselves or have listened only their neighbors to learn what they ought to do, how they ought to behave, and what the values are they should be living for.

It Takes Courage To Do What You Want

It was a combination of a high rate of speed and an inexperienced driver. It's an unbelievable tragedy.

Any life career that you choose in following your bliss should be chosen with that sense that nobody can frighten me off from this thing. And no matter what happens, this is the validation of my life and action.

The goal is to live with godlike composure on the full rush of energy, like Dionysus riding the leopard, without being torn to pieces.

Airbus really escaped unscathed in this cycle, ... Boeing has a monopoly with the big planes in Asia. (It) has really made a living out there; the Asian flu affects Boeing more than Airbus.

A computer is like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy

Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before.

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls

It's a little too early to tell what happened, ... This had the appearance of a well-planned and well-negotiated deal that was designed to be released on Monday.

However, if we are wrong and there is a strike, we would expect BA shares to trade down by $2 to $4 per share and we would consider that a buying opportunity.

If you follow your bliss...the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.

Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.

If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's.

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.

The unconscious sends all sorts of vapors, odd beings, terrors, and deluding images up into the mind - whether in dream, broad daylight, or insanity: for the human kingdom, beneath the floor of the comparatively neat little dwelling that we call our consciousness, goes down into unsuspected Aladdin caves.

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

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.

Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damned thing in the cave that was so dreaded has become the center.

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.

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.

In one of the Upanishads it says, when the glow of a sunset holds you and you say 'Aha,' that is the recognition of the divinity. And when you say 'Aha' to an art object, that is a recognition of divinity. And what divinity is it? It is your divinity, which is the only divinity there is. We are all phenomenal manifestations of a divine will to live, and that will and the consciousness of life is one in all of us, and that is what artwork expresses.

Eternity is not future or past. Eternity is a dimension of now.

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.

There is perhaps nothing worse than reaching the top of the ladder and discovering that you’re on the wrong wall.

The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for.

Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.

To find your own way is to follow your bliss. This involves analysis, watching yourself and seeing where real deep bliss is -- not the quick little excitement , but the real deep, life-filling bliss.

The folktale is the primer of the picture-language of the soul.

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

Mythologies, in other words, mythologies and religions are great poems and, when recognized as such, point infallibly through things and events to the ubiquity of a

Life, in both its knowing and its doing, has become today a "free fall," so to say, into the next minute, into the future. So that, whereas, formerly, those not wishing to hazard the adventure of an individual life could rest within the pale of a comfortably guaranteed social order, today all the walls have burst. It is not left to us to chooseto hazard the adventure of an unprecedented life: adventure is upon us, like a tidal wave.

If you have the guts to follow the risk...if one follows what I call one's "bliss" - the thing that really gets you deep in the gut and that you feel is your life - doors will open up...if you follow your bliss, you'll have your bliss, whether you have money or not.

Poets are simply those who have made a profession ans a lifestyle of being in touch with their bliss.

Art is the set of wings to carry you out of your own entanglement.

When you are in accord with nature, nature will yield its bounty. This is something that is coming up in our own consciousness now...recognizi ng that by violating the environment in which we are living, we are really cutting off the energy and source of our own living. And it’s this sense of accord, so that living properly in relation to what has to be done in this world one fosters the vitality of the environment.

Myths are public dreams; dreams are private myths. By finding your own dream and following it through, it will lead you to the myth-world in which you live. But just as in dream, the subject and object, though they seem to be separate, are really the same.

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

There have been systems of religion where the mother is the prime parent, the source, and she's really a more immediate parent than the father, because one is born from the mother...so that the image of the woman is the image of the world.

The hero’s journey always begins with the call. One way or another, a guide must come to say, 'Look, you’re in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip. There is a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being, that’s not been touched. So you’re at home here? Well, there’s not enough of you there.' And so it starts.

The ultimate aim of the quest must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others.

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come. -

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.