Meg > Meg's Quotes

“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
― Joseph Campbell

“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

“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”
― Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

“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.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

“All religions are true but none are literal.”
― Joseph Campbell

“The Hero Path

We have not even to risk the adventure alone
for the heroes of all time have gone before us.
The labyrinth is thoroughly known ...
we have only to follow the thread of the hero path.
And where we had thought to find an abomination
we shall find a God.

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.”
― Joseph Campbell

“God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, 'Ah!”
― Joseph Campbell

“The fates lead him who will; him who won't they drag.”
― Joseph Campbell

“Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold.”
― Joseph Campbell

“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.”
― Joseph Campbell

“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.”
― Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

“All life stinks and you must embrace that with compassion.”
― Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

“Now I found it in writing sentences. You can write that sentence in a way that you would have written it last year. Or you can write it in the way of the exquisite nuance that is sriting in your mind now. But that takes a lot of ... waiting for the right word to come.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work

“Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work

“Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man. When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that's what is threatening the world at this minute. ...Certainly Star Wars has a valid mythological perspective. It shows the state as a machine and asks, "Is the machine going to crush humanity or serve humanity?" Humanity comes not from the machine but from the heart. What I see in Star Wars is the same problem that Faust gives us: Mephistopheles, the machine man, can provide us with all the means, and is thus likely to determine the aims of life as well. But of course the characteristic of Faust, which makes him eligible to be saved, is that he seeks aims that are not those of the machine. Now, when Luke Skywalker unmasks his father, he is taking off the machine role that the father has played. The father was the uniform. That is power, the state role.”
― Joseph Campbell

“Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.”
― Joseph Campbell

“Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.

We must be willing to get rid of the life we planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

I have bought this wonderful machine — a computer ... it seems to me to be an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy.”
― Joseph Campbell

“It may be a species of impudence to think that the way you understand God is the way God is. (60).”
― Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

“If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track which has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one that you ARE living.”
― Joseph Campbell

“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, The Masks of God, Volume 1: Primitive Mythology

“Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are the artists of one kind or another.”
― Joseph Campbell

“He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty and life and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces

“Is the god the source, or is the god a human manner of conceiving of the force and energy that supports the world? In our tradition God is a male. This male and female differentiation is made, however, within the field of time and space, the field of duality. If God is beyond duality, you cannot say that God is a "He." You cannot say God is a "She." You cannot say God is an "It." (18)”
― Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

“There seem to be only two kinds of people: Those who think that metaphors are facts, and those who know that they are not facts. Those who know they are not facts are what we call "atheists," and those who think they are facts are "religious." Which group really gets the message?”
― Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

“How does the ordinary person come to the transcendent? For a start, I would say, study poetry. Learn how to read a poem. You need not have the experience to get the message, or at least some indication of the message. It may come gradually. (92)”
― Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

“With the moon walk, the religious myth that sustained these notions could no longer be held. With our view of earthrise, we could see that the earth and the heavens were no longer divided but that the earth is in the heavens. (105)”
― Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

“The psychological dangers through which earlier generations were guided by the symbols and spiritual exercises of their mythological and religious inheritance, we today (in so far as we are unbelievers, or, if believers, in so far as our inherited beliefs fail to represent the real problems of contemporary life) must face alone, or, at best with only tentative, impromptu, and not often very effective guidance. This is our problem as modern, "enlightened" individuals, for whom all gods and devils have been rationalized out of existence.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces

“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.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

“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.

Love is a friendship set to music.”
― Joseph Campbell

“Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.”
― William Penn, Some Fruits Of Solitude