Amanda > Amanda's Quotes

“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.”
― Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology

“If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's.”
― Joseph Campbell

“Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.”
― Joseph Campbell

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

“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. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It's a very interesting shift of perspective and that's all it is... joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes.”
― Joseph Campbell, Sukhavati:Place of Bliss

“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.”
― Joseph Campbell

“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

“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.”
― Joseph Campbell

“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.”
― 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

“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

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

“You enter the forest
at the darkest point,
where there is no path.

Where there is a way or path,
it is someone else's path.

You are not on your own path.

If you follow someone else's way,
you are not going to realize
your potential.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work

“Myth is what we call other people's religion.”
― Joseph Campbell

“I don't have to have faith, I have experience.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

“Instead of clearing his own heart the zealot tries to clear the world.”
― Joseph Campbell, Hero With a Thousand Faces

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

“We save the world by being alive ourselves.”
― Joseph Campbell

“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.”
― Hal Borland

“As you proceed through life, following your own path, birds will shit on you. Don't bother to brush it off.
Getting a comedic view of your situation gives you spiritual distance.
Having a sense of humor saves you.”
― Joseph Campbell

“There is perhaps nothing worse than reaching the top of the ladder
and discovering that you’re on the wrong wall.”
― JOSEPH CAMPBELL

“For we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heros of all time have gone before us...”
― Joseph Campbell

“I think the person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money [not for purpose or passion]- has turned himself into a slave.”
― Joseph Campbell

“When you translate the Bible with excessive literalism, you demythologize it. The possibility of a convincing reference to the individual's own spiritual experience is lost. (111)”
― Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

“Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it is not yet the end”....... Patel, Hotel Manager, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”
― Patel

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again.”
― Joseph Campbell

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

“Regrets are illuminations come too late.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces