Joseph John Campbell was born in March 1904. Campbell was an American author.
He was an American professor at Sarah Lawrence College in Literature and showed great interest in mythology. He published works on different cultural arenas and myths. He also believed in the traditional Catholic culture.
Joseph had a thorough knowledge of the Native American Culture and knew about the rituals of his Irish Catholic religion. He traveled across the globe to discover cultural diversities.
He moved from one country to another and collected information about their culture. He became a well-known writer for his work on comparative mythology and comparative religion. He believed that a person should nurture his inner value and polish his inner value rather than just outer value.
Campbell asks people to make their heartbeat match with the universe's beat. In 1949, Campbell published the book The Hero With a Thousand Faces.
The book gained huge accolades and became popular. Campbell included his experiences about life and humans in the book.
His theory was so fascinating that writers and authors worldwide appreciated it and implemented it. The maker of the Star Wars saga George Lucas also appreciated the efforts of Campbell. The book got included in the list of Times 100 best most influential books in English in 2011.
He introduced the phrase, 'Follow your Bliss', which became a widespread theory among writers all across the globe. The Star Wars creator, George Lucas, gave Jeorge international recognition when he found Campbell's work influencing the Star Wars saga.
Joseph Campbell Quotes On Life
"Find a place inside where absorb, and the joy will burn the pain."
"Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself."
"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are."
"To find your own way is to follow your bliss."
"The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek."
"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 the universe will open doors where there were only walls."
"We're in a freefall into future. We don't know where we're going. Things are changing so fast, and always when you're going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along."
"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 let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us."
"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."
"We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us."
"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."
"If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's."
"It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure."
"The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature."
"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."
"I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive."
"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?"
"Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be."
"Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging."
"Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy."
"Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain."
"When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness."
"I don't have to have faith, I have experience."
“All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act.”
"Midlife is when you reach the top of the ladder and find that it was against the wrong wall."
"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."
"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 have never met an ordinary man, woman, or child."
"Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is."
"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."
"Regrets are illuminations come too late."
"Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy."
"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?"
Motivational Joseph Campbell Quotes
"A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself."
"God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that."
"The ultimate dragon is within you, it is your ego clamping you down."
"If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else."
"The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure."
"Following your bliss is not self-indulgent, but vital; your whole physical system knows that this is the way to be alive in this world and the way to give to the world the very best that you have to offer."
"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."
"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."
"Where we had thought to travel outwards 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."
“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 is the kingdom? It lies in our realization of the ubiquity of the divine presence in our neighbors, in our enemies, in all of us."
"The first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrous nature of the earthly human realm as well as its glory, the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed."
"Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths."
"When you follow your bliss, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you."
"The way to find out about your happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy when you really are happy-not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self-analysis."
"Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again."
"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."
"We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us."
"Dream is the personalized myth, the myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamic of the psyche."
"It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of a lie. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure."
"If you are on the right path you will find that invisible hands are helping."
"Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself."
"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."
"If you are falling....dive."
"Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy."
"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."
Joseph Campbell Quotes On Love
"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."
"Modern romance, like Greek tragedy, celebrates the mystery of dismemberment, which is life in time."
"The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved."
"The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth."
"Marriage is not a love affair. A love affair is a totally different thing."
"A marriage is a commitment to that which you are. That person is literally your other half. And you and the other are one."
"A marriage is a life commitment, and a life commitment means the prime concern of your life. If marriage is not the prime concern, you're not married."
"The Puritans called marriage 'The Little Church within the Church.' In marriage, every day you love, and every day you forgive. It is an ongoing sacrament – love and forgiveness."
"In a love affair, you have two lives in a more or less successful relationship to each other for a certain length of time, as long as it seems agreeable."
"When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you're sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship."
"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."
"Perfection isn't human. Human beings are not perfect. What evokes our love- and I mean love, not lust is the imperfection of the human being."
"When the imperfection of the real person peaks through, say, 'This is a challenge to my compassion. 'Then make a try and something might begin to get going."
"Love is perfect kindness."
"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."
"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."
"The principle of compassion is that which converts disillusionment into a participatory companionship. So when the fact shows through the animus or anima, what you must render is compassion."
"This is the basic love, the charity, that turns a critic into a living human being who has something to give to — as well as to demand of — the world."
Miscellaneous Joseph Campbell Quotes
"The demon that you can swallow gives you its power, and the greater life's pain, the greater life's reply. Not all who hesitate are lost. The psyche has many secrets in reserve."
"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."
"And where we had thought to slay another we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outwards 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."
"The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light. Instead of clearing his own heart the zealot tries to clear the world."
"The hero's journey always begins with the call. One way or another, a guide must come to say, 'Look, you're in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip."
"The experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. Heaven is not the place to have the experience; here is the place to have the experience."
"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."
"God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that."
"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."
"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."
