Joseph Campbell Quotes

“I think that Jean Houston has broken through to a new understanding of the sense and uses of inward-turned contemplation-a n understanding that leaves the Freudian schools of technique and theory far behind. The accent is not on the curing of disease but on the enlargement, rather, of our health.”

“Life lives on life. This is the sense of the symbol of the Ouroboros, the serpent biting its tail. Everything that lives lives on the death of something else. Your own body will be food for something else. Anyone who denies this, anyone who holds back, is out of order. Death is an act of giving.”

“Every people is a chosen people in its own mind. And it is rather amusing that their name for themselves usually means mankind.”

“If you can see your path clearly in front of you, it's probably someone else's.”

“Both the artist and the lover know that perfection is not loveable. It is the clumsiness of a fault that makes a person lovable.”

“The adventure evoked a quality of his character that he didn't know he possessed.”

“The sin of inadvertence, not being alert, not quite awake, is the sin of missing the moment of life-live with unremitting alertness.”

“You enter the forest at 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 realize your potential.”

“I think what we lack isn't science, but poetry that reveals what the heart is ready to recognize”

“To find your own way is to follow your bliss.”

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

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

“It's a shame to waste [the uniqueness that is you], by doing what someone else has done.”

“When you no longer are compelled by desire and fear . . . when you have seen the radiance in eternity from all forms of time . . . when you follow your bliss . . . doors will open where you would not have thought there were doors . . . and the world will step in and help.”

“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.”

“The familiar life horizon has been outgrown: the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand.”

“What is the cause, though, of the growth of an acorn? The oak that is to come! What is to happen in the future is then the cause of what is occurring now; and, at the same time, what occurred in the past is also the cause of what is happening now. In addition, a great number of things round about, on every side, are causing what is happening now. Everything, all the time, is causing everything else”

“Passion will move men beyond themselves, beyond their shortcomings, beyond their failures.”

“How to get rid of ego as dictator and turn it into messenger and servant and scout, to be in your service, is the trick.”

“The person who thinks he has found the ultimate truth is wrong.”

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

“Vegetarians are people who cannot hear tomatos screaming.”

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

“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.”

“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.”