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Joseph Campbell Quotes - Page 7

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Love is the burning point of life, and since all life is sorrowful, so is love. The stronger the love, the more the pain. Love itself is pain, you might say -the pain of being truly alive.

Love is the burning point of life, and since all life is sorrowful, so is love. The stronger the love, the more the pain. Love itself is pain, you might say -the pain of being truly alive.

Joseph Campbell
Pain, Love Is, Stronger

The function of the society is to cultivate the individual. It is not the function of the individual to support society.

Joseph Campbell
Support, Individualism, Individual
Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.239, Anchor

If you follow your bliss you will find a path laid out before you that has been waiting for you all along and you will begin to live the life you ought to be living.

Joseph Campbell
Live Life, Writing, Waiting

In meditating, meditate on your own divinity. The goal of life is to be a vehicle for something higher. Keep your eyes up there between the world of opposites watching your 'play' in the world.Let the world be as it is and learn to rock with the waves.

Joseph Campbell
Eye, Rocks, Opposites

The Fates guide those who will and drag those who won't!

Joseph Campbell
Fate, Drag, Guides

The best things cannot be told, the second best are misunderstood. After that comes civilized conversation; after that, mass indoctrination; after that, intercultural exchange.

Joseph Campbell
Misunderstood, Second Best, Conversation
Joseph Campbell (1991). “The Masks of God: Creative Mythology”, Penguin Group USA

The object becomes aesthetically significant when it becomes metaphysically significant.

Joseph Campbell
Significant, Importance, Objects

What's made up in the head is the fiction. What comes out of the heart is a myth.

Joseph Campbell
Heart, Fiction, Made
Joseph Campbell, Phil Cousineau, Stuart L. Brown (1990). “The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work”, p.73, New World Library

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

Joseph Campbell
Inspirational, Life, Space

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.

Joseph Campbell
Depth, Consciousness, Myth

The insecure way is the secure way.

Joseph Campbell
Insecure, Way, Secure

What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There's always the possibility of fiasco. But there's also the possibility of bliss.

Joseph Campbell
Good Life, Military, Hero
Joseph Campbell, David Kudler (2004). “Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation”, p.133, New World Library

The call to adventure signifies that destiny has summoned the hero.

Joseph Campbell
Hero, Adventure, Destiny
Joseph Campbell (2008). “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, p.48, New World Library

You may have success in life, but then just think of it - what kind of life was it? What good was it - you've never done the thing you wanted to do in all your life. I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want to go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don't let anyone throw you off.

Joseph Campbell
Thinking, Soul, Feelings
Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.147, Anchor

Poets and artists who speak of the mystery are rare.

Joseph Campbell
Artist, Mystery, Speak

Our life has become so economic and practical in its orientation that, as you get older, the claims of the moment upon you are so great, you hardly know where the hell you are, or what it is you intended. You are always doing something that is required of you. Where is your bliss station? You have to try to find it.

Joseph Campbell
Trying, Bliss, Hell
Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.115, Anchor

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

Joseph Campbell
Inspirational, Life, Faith

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

Joseph Campbell
Bliss, Poet, Lifestyle
"The Power of Myth".

The achievement of the hero is one that he is ready for and it's really a manifestation of his character. It's amusing the way in which the landscape and conditions of the environment match the readiness of the hero. The adventure that he is ready for is the one that he gets.

Joseph Campbell
Hero, Character, Adventure
"Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth (The Hero's Adventure)". TV Mini-Series, June 21, 1988.

Religon is misunderstood mythology

Joseph Campbell
Misunderstood, Mythology

If you go to a master to study and learn the techniques, you diligently follow all the instructions the master puts upon you. But then comes the time for using the rules in your own way and not being bound by them....You can actually forget the rules because they have been assimilated. You are an artist. Your own innocence now is of one who has become an artist, who has been, as it were, transmuted.... You can't have creativity unless you leave behind the bounded, the fixed, all the rules.

Joseph Campbell
Creativity, Artist, Technique

Every hero must have the courage to be alone, to take the journey for himself.

Joseph Campbell
Hero, Journey

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won.

Joseph Campbell
Hero, Victory, World
Joseph Campbell (2008). “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, p.23, New World Library

It's only when a man tames his own demons that he becomes the king of himself if not of the world.

Joseph Campbell
Kings, Men, Evil
"Maurice Sendak: "Where the Wild Things Are"". "Now" with Bill Moyers, www.pbs.org. March 12, 2004.

Sometimes the serpent is represented as a circle eating its own tail. That’s an image of life. Life sheds one generation after another, to be born again. The serpent represents immortal energy and consciousness engaged in the field of time, constantly throwing off death and being born again. There is something tremendously terrifying about life when you look at it that way. And so the serpent carries in itself the sense of both the fascination and the terror of life.

Joseph Campbell
Circles, Generations, Tails

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