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Joseph Campbell Quotes - Page 11

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At such moments, you realize that you and the other are, in fact, one. It's a big realization. Survival is the second law of life. The first is that we are all one.

At such moments, you realize that you and the other are, in fact, one. It's a big realization. Survival is the second law of life. The first is that we are all one.

Joseph Campbell
Law, Survival, Firsts

The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. The objective world remains what it was, but, because of a shift of emphasis within the subject, is beheld as though transformed. Where formerly life and death contended, now enduring being is made manifest-as indifferent to the accidents of time as water boiling in a pot is to the destiny of a bubble, or as the cosmos to the appearance and disappearance of a galaxy of stars.

Joseph Campbell
Stars, Destiny, Men

Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging. Negativism to the pain and ferocity of life is negativism to life. We are not there until we can say 'yea' to it all.

Joseph Campbell
Pain, Opportunity, Challenges

The hero, whether god or goddess, man or woman, the figure in a myth or the dreamer of a dream discovers and assimilates his opposite (his own unsuspected self) either by swallowing it or by being swallowed.

Joseph Campbell
Dream, Hero, Men
Joseph Campbell (2008). “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, p.89, New World Library

We can safely say, therefore, that whereas some moralists may find it possible to make a distinction between two spheres and reigns-one of flesh, the other of the spirit, one of time, the other of eternity-where ever love arises such definitions vanish, and a sense of life awakens in which all such oppositions are at one.

Joseph Campbell
Two, May, Definitions
Joseph Campbell (2011). “Myths to Live By”, p.89, Joseph Campbell Foundation

A woman is a vehicle of life. Life has overtaken her. Woman is what it is all about-the giving of birth and the giving of nourishment.

Joseph Campbell
Women, Giving, Birth
Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.104, Anchor

When you go through life ... it all seems accidental at the time it is happening. Then when you get on in your 60s or 70s and look back, your life looks like a well-planned novel with a coherent theme ... Incidents that seemed accidental, pure chance, turn out to be major elements in the structuring of this novel. Schopenhauer says, 'Who wrote this novel? You did.'

Joseph Campbell
Looks, Elements, Chance

One cannot predict the next mythology any more than one can predict tonight's dream; for a mythology is not an ideology. It is not something projected from the brain, but something experienced from the heart, from recognition of identities behind or within the appearances of nature, perceiving with love a 'thou' where there would otherwise have been only an 'it.'

Joseph Campbell
Dream, Heart, Brain
Joseph Campbell (2002). “The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion”, p.19, New World Library

The passage of the mythological hero may be over ground, incidentally; fundamentally it is inward--into depths where obscure resistances are overcome, and long lost, forgotten powers are revivified, to be made available for the transfiguration of the world.

Joseph Campbell
Hero, Long, Overcoming
Joseph Campbell (2008). “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, p.22, New World Library

Life is a guy trying to play a violin solo in public, while learning the music and his instrument at the same time.

Joseph Campbell
Play, Guy, Trying

Clearly, mythology is no toy for children. Nor is it a matter of archaic, merely scholarly concern, of no moment to modern men of action. For its symbols (whether in the tangible form of images or in the abstract form of ideas) touch and release the deepest centers of motivation, moving literate and illiterate alike, moving mobs, moving civilizations.

Joseph Campbell
Inspirational, Children, Motivation
Joseph Campbell (1976). “The Masks of God: Primitive mythology”

Once you know the difference between right and wrong, you have lots fewer decisions to make.

Joseph Campbell
Differences, Decision, Fewer

You have been thinking one way. Now you have to think a different way.

Joseph Campbell
Thinking, Different, Way

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.

Joseph Campbell
Inspirational, Dark, Rivers
Joseph Campbell (2008). “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, p.15, New World Library

Breaking out is following your bliss pattern, quitting the old place, starting your hero journey, following your bliss. You throw off yesterday as the snake sheds its skin.

Joseph Campbell
Hero, Journey, Snakes

This is an important point about symbols: they do not refer to historical events; they refer through historical events to spiritual or psychological principles and powers that are of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and that are everywhere.

Joseph Campbell
Spiritual, Yesterday, Historical

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?

Joseph Campbell
Inspirational, Technology, Ethos
Joseph Campbell, Bill D. Moyers (1988). “The Power of Myth”, Harmony

I don’t think people are really seeking the meaning of Life. I think we’re seeking an experience of being alive…we want to feel the rapture of being alive

Joseph Campbell
Inspirational, Thinking, People

Myths are the world's dreams. They are archetypal dreams and deal with great human problems. Myths and dreams come from the same place. They come from realizations of some kind that then have to find expression in symbolic form.

Joseph Campbell
Dream, Expression, Realization

There are mythologies that are scattered, broken up, all around us. We stand on what I call a terminal moraine of shattered mythic systems that once structured society. They can be detected all around us. You can select any of these fragments that activate your imagination for your own use. Let it help shape your own relationship to the unconscious system out of which these symbols have come.

Joseph Campbell
Relationship, Broken, Imagination
"Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor".

The modern hero-deed must be that of questing to bring to light again the lost Atlantis of the co-ordinated Soul.

Joseph Campbell
Hero, Light, Soul
Joseph Campbell (2008). “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, p.334, New World Library

At first you might find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred space and use it, eventually something will happen. Your sacred space is where you find yourself again and again.

Joseph Campbell
Yoga, Space, Finding Yourself

To find your own way is to follow your bliss. This involves analysis, watching yourself and seeing where real deep bliss is -- not the quick little excitement , but the real deep, life-filling bliss.

Joseph Campbell
Real, Deep Life, Analysis

The dreamer and his dream are the same...the powers personified in a dream are these that move the world.

Joseph Campbell
Dream, Moving, Dreamer

When people find out what it is that's ticking in them, they get straightened out.

Joseph Campbell
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