Joseph Campbell Quotes

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

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.

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

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

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

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

Life is but a mask worn on the face of death. And is death, then, but another mask? 'How many can say,' asks the Aztec poet, 'that there is, or is not, a truth beyond?'

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

Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived. Follow the path that is no path, follow your bliss.

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

When you are on your path, and it is truly your path, doors will open for you where there were no doors for someone else.

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

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

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.

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

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

At the darkest moment comes the light.

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.

You've got to say yes to this miracle of life as it is, not on condition that it follow your rules.

No one in the world was ever you before, with your particular gifts and abilities and possibilities.

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

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

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?

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

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.

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. -

The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.

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

Our demons are our 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.

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

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

You don't ask what a dance means. You enjoy it. You don't ask what the world means. You enjoy it. You don't ask what you mean. You enjoy it.

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.

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

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

The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation.

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

If you are on the right path you will find that invisible hands are helping.

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.

All we really want to do is dance.

The demon that you can swallow gives you it’s power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply.

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.

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

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

Follow your bliss. The heroic life is living the individual adventure. There is no security in following the call to adventure. Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be.

It is the function of art to carry us beyond speech to experience.

The key to the Grail is compassion, 'suffering with,' feeling another's sorrow as if it were your own. The one who finds the dynamo of compassion is the one who's found the Grail.

I think of mythology as the homeland of the muses, the inspirers of art, the inspirers of poetry. To see life as a poem and yourself participating in a poem is what the myth does for you.

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.

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.