Joseph Campbell
87 quotes
Biography
Joseph John Campbell was an American writer and the husband of Jean Erdman. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion.
"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."
"Love is a friendship set to music."
"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."
"We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us."
"We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us."
"A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself."
"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are."
"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."
"Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls."
"Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls."
"People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. 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 with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."
"If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's."
"Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time."
"Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again."
"The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature."
"All religions are true but none are literal."
"Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies."
"Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is."
"You enter the forestat the darkest point,where there is no path.Where there is a way or path,it is someone else's path.You are not on your own path.If you follow someone else's way,you are not going to realizeyour potential."
"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."
"The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves"
"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."
"Myth is what we call other people's religion."
"The fates lead him who will; him who won't they drag."
"The demon that you can swallow gives you its power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply."