100+ Interesting Joseph Campbell Quotes About Life, Love, and Mythology

Joseph Campbell Hero with A Thousand Faces Quotes

Check some Joseph Campbell quotes in his book "The Hero with A Thousand Faces" to know more about mythology.

• "Only birth can conquer death—the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new."

• "By this, the dreamer crosses to the other shore. And by a like miracle, so will each whose work is the difficult, dangerous task of self-discovery and self-development he portrayed across the ocean of life."

• "All that we see is but the reflex of a power that endures, untouched by the pain... a transcendent anonymity regarding itself in all of the self-centered, battling egos that are born and die in time."

• "Regrets are illuminations come too late."

• "Tragedy is an unfinished comedy."

• "Not all who hesitate are lost. The psyche has many secrets in reserve. And these are not disclosed unless required."

• "Perhaps some of us have to go through dark and devious ways before we can find the river of peace or the highroad to the soul's destination."

• "Those who know, not only that the Everlasting lives in them, but that what they, and all things, really are is the Everlasting, dwell in the groves of the wish-fulfilling trees, drink the brew of immortality, and listen everywhere to the unheard music of eternal concord. These are the immortals."

• "The way to become human is to learn to recognize the lineaments of God in all the wonderful modulations of the face of man."

• "Typically, the hero of the fairy tale achieves a domestic, microcosmic triumph, and the hero of myth a world historical, macrocosmic triumph."

• "The two, the hero and his ultimate god, the seeker and the found, are thus understood as the outside and the inside of a single, self-mirrored mystery, which is identical with the mystery of the manifest world. The great deed of the supreme hero is to come to the knowledge of this unity in multiplicity and then to make it know."

• "Joseph Campbell Quote: It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those that tend to tie it back."

• "It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those that tend to tie it back."

• "The first stage of the mythological journey, which we have designated the “call to adventure” signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown."

• "The problem of the hero is to pierce himself (and therewith his world) precisely through that point; to shatter and annihilate that key knot of his limited existence."

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

• "Instead of clearing his own heart the zealot tries to clear the world."

• "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: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."

• "The hero, the waker of his own soul, is himself but the convenient means of his own dissolution."

• "The effect of the successful adventure of the hero is the unlocking and release again of the flow of life into the body of the world."

• "Mythology, in other words, is psychology misread as biography, history, and cosmology."

• "Full circle, from to tomb of the womb to the womb of the tomb, we come."

• "Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed."

• "The hero of yesterday becomes the tyrant of tomorrow, unless he crucifies himself today."

• "The boon brought from the transcendent deep becomes quickly rationalized into nonentity, and the need becomes great for another hero to refresh the world."

• "For the bliss of the deep abode is not lightly abandoned in favor of the self-scattering of the wakened state."

• "The problem of the theologian is to keep his symbol translucent, so that it may not block out the very light it is supposed to convey."

• "The adventure of the hero represents the moment in his life when he achieved illumination, the nuclear moment when, while still alive, he found and opened the road to the light beyond the dark walls of our living death."

• "The contemplation of the life thus should be undertaken as a meditation on one’s own immanent divinity, not as a prelude to precise imitation, the lesson being, not “Do thus and be good,” but “Know this and be God."

• "Symbols are only the vehicles of communication; they must not be mistaken for the final term, the tenor, or their reference. No matter how attractive or impressive they may seem, they remain but convenient means, accommodated to the understanding."

Joseph Campbell Power of Myth Quotes

These Joseph Campbell quotes are taken from his TV show Joseph Campbell and Power of Myth quotes.

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

• "The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are."

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

• "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."

• "Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; and where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world."

• "Joseph Campbell quote: Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it..."

• "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 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."

• "All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you."

• "Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths."

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

• "We're not on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes."

• "Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends."

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

• "If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That's why it's your path."

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

• "There's nothing militant about Jesus. I don't read anything like that in any of the gospels. Peter drew his sword and cut off the servant's ear, and Jesus said, "Put back thy sword, Peter." But Peter has had his sword out and at work ever since."

• "I think it's important to live life with a knowledge of its mystery, and of your own mystery."

• "For we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us."

• "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."

• "Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and door will open where you didn't know they were going to be."

• "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."

Quotes from Joseph Campbell

More Joseph Campbell quotes to motivate you to live your life.

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

• “Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.”

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

• “I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”

• “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.”

• “If you’re going to have a story, have a big story.”

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

• “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”

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

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

• “If you are falling, dive.”

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

• “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 it’s spectacular.”

• “Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold.”

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

• “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.”

• “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?”

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

• “You become mature when you become the authority of your own life.”

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

• “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.”

• “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.”

• “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.”

Joseph Campbell Love Quotes

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Here are some of the Joseph Campbell quotes about love and marriage.

• “When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you’re sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship."

• "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."

• “Love is perfect kindness.”

• "The Chinese image of the Tao, with the dark and light interacting – that’s the relationship of yang and yin, male and female, which is what marriage is. And that’s what you have become when you have married. You’re no longer this one alone; your identity is in a relationship."

• “When your heart speaks, take good notes.”

• “The encounter and separation, for all its wildness, is typical of the sufferings of love."

• "Sequences of events from the corners of the world will draw gradually together, and miracles of coincidence bring the inevitable to pass.”

• "...God is love, the He can be, and is to be, loved, and that all without exception are his children."

• "The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change."

More than 100 Joseph Campbell quotes are provided by Tripboba, so you can read and deepen your knowledge about Joseph Campbell and mythology. But, it's good if you feel motivated after reading his quotes to follow your bliss, whenever it brings you.