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Joseph Campbell Quotes

All Quotes Achievement Addiction Adventure Art Atheism Authority Birth Bliss Cancer Challenges Change Character Children Church Communication Community Compassion Consciousness Courage Creativity Culture Darkness Desire Destiny Devil Earth Ego Encouraging Energy Eternity Evil Experience Faith Fate Feelings Finding Yourself Giving God Happiness Heart Heaven Hell Heroism Human Nature Humanity Ignorance Imagination Inspiration Inspirational Inspiring Journey Joy Life Lifetime Live Life Love Lying Marriage Meaning Of Life Meditation Mercy Metaphor Military Morning Motivational Mountain Myth Mythology Nature Opportunity Pain Passion Past Perfection Positive Positive Thinking Rapture Reading Reality Recovery Reflection Regret Religion Revelations Risk Sacrifice School Security Sleep Sorrow Soul Students Success Suffering Technology Time Today Understanding Universe Vision Waiting Wall War Water Wisdom Writing Yoga
If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's.

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

Joseph Campbell
Inspirational, Life, Journey

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

Joseph Campbell
Inspirational, Life, Change

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.

Joseph Campbell
Inspirational, Self Improvement, Meaning Of Life

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

Joseph Campbell
Path, Mystery, Problem
Joseph Campbell (1991). “The Hero's Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell : Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work”, Harper San Francisco

You are more than you think you are. There are dimensions of your being and a potential for realization and consciousness that are not included in your concept of yourself. Your life is much deeper and broader than you conceive it to be here. What you are living is but a fractional inkling of what is really within you, what gives you life, breadth, and depth.

Joseph Campbell
Thinking, Giving, Dimensions
Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.70, Anchor

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

Joseph Campbell
Hands, Invisible Hand, Path

Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called "the love of your fate." Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, "This is what I need." It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment-not discouragement-you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.

Joseph Campbell
Success, Jobs, Character

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

Joseph Campbell
Inspirational, Motivational, Military

People forget facts, but they remember stories.

Joseph Campbell
People, Stories, Facts

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

Joseph Campbell
Inspirational, Being Yourself, Appreciation

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. There is a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being, that’s not been touched. So you’re at home here? Well, there’s not enough of you there.' And so it starts.

Joseph Campbell
Inspirational, Life, Spiritual

The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for.

Joseph Campbell
Caves, Source, Turns
"A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living". Book edited by Diane K. Osbon, 1991.

I have found that you have only to take that one step toward the gods, and they will then take ten steps toward you. That step, the heroic first step of the journey, is out of, or over the edge of, your boundaries, and it often must be taken before you know that you will.

Joseph Campbell
Taken, Journey, Firsts

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

Joseph Campbell
Art, Speech, Function

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.

Joseph Campbell
Doors, Path

If you are to advance, all fixed ideas must go.

Joseph Campbell
Ideas, Fixed, Ifs

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

Joseph Campbell
Yoga, Positivity, Free Your Mind

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.

Joseph Campbell
Morning, Creative, Use
Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.115, Anchor

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.

Joseph Campbell
Inspirational, Work, Doors
"The Power of Myth". Book by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers edited by Betty Sue Flowers, 1988.

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

Joseph Campbell
Inspirational, God, Spiritual

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. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what I call "following your bliss."

Joseph Campbell
Happiness, Self, People
"The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell, (p. 193), 1991.

Midlife is when you reach the top of the ladder and find that it was against the wrong wall.

Joseph Campbell
Life, Wall, Ladders

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

Joseph Campbell
Inspirational, Life, Happiness

The hero journey is inside of you; tear off the veils and open the mystery of your self.

Joseph Campbell
Hero, Journey, Self

You must have a place to which you can go in your heart, your mind, or your house, almost every day, where you do not owe anyone and where no one owes you - a place that simply allows for the blossoming of something new and promising.

Joseph Campbell
Heart, House, Mind

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