Pathways to Bliss Quotes

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

“Revolution doesn't have to do with smashing something; it has to do with bringing something forth. If you spend all your time thinking about that which you are attacking, then you are negatively bound to it. You have to find the zeal in yourself and bring that out.”
― Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

“What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There is nothing you can do that's more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way you will find, live, become a realization of your own personal myth.”
― Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

“Maslow's five values are the values for which people live when they have nothing to live for. Nothing has seized them, nothing has caught them, nothing has driven them spiritually mad and made them worth talking to.”
― Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

“In our society of fixed texts and printed words, it is the function of the poet to see the life value of the facts round about, and to deify them, as it were, to provide images that relate the everyday to the eternal.”
― Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

“What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, in the fulfillment or the fiasco.”
― Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

“Eternity has nothing to do with time. Time is what shuts you out from eternity. Eternity is now. It is the transcendent dimension of the now to which myth refers.”
― Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

“One finds the same basic mythological themes in all the religions of the world, from the most primitive to the most sophisticated, from the North American plains to European forests to Polynesian atolls. The imagery of myth is a language, a lingua franca that expresses something basic about our deepest humanity. It is variously inflected in its various provinces.”
― Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

“We keep hearing about the revolution around us all the time: the revolution, the revolution, the revolution. Revolution doesn’t have to do with smashing something; it has to do with bringing something forth. If you spend all your time thinking about that which you are attacking, then you are negatively bound to it. You have to find the zeal in yourself and bring that out. That is what’s given to you—one life to live. Marx teaches us to blame the society for our frailties; Freud teaches us to blame our parents for our frailties; astrology teaches us to blame the universe. The only place to look for blame is within: you didn’t have the guts to bring up your full moon and live the life that was your potential.”
― Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

“...an ameliorative mythology [that through] prayer or good deeds or some other activity, one can change the basic principles, the fundamental preconditions of life... This is like marrying someone in order to improve him or her—it is not a marriage.”
― Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

“Ona and Yagan people.”
― Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

“Myth is not the same as history; myths are not inspiring stories of people who lived notable lives. No, myth is the transcendent in relationship to the present.”
― Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

“Tenemos que mantener la puerta abierta para hacer algo que no hayamos hecho antes. Para hacer lo que debemos, es preciso mantener en suspenso cualquier tipo de crítica.”
― Joseph Campbell, EN BUSCA DE LA FELICIDAD: Mitología y transformación personal (Sabiduría perenne)

“En la tercera parte, «El viaje del héroe», Campbell explora la premisa básica, esbozada en su obra pionera El héroe de las mil caras, de la mitología como herramienta para observar la propia vida. Esta tercera parte ha supuesto también un reto muy importante. La mayor parte del material que la compone ha sido extraída de un fragmento de tres días de un seminario de un mes de duración celebrado en 1983. Como se trataba de una exposición muy larga y libre, su presentación resultaba demasiado difusa. Descubrir un hilo narrativo que no impusiera una tesis o redujese la exploración hasta diluirla y hacerla incomprensible ha resultado, por decirlo en pocas palabras, un auténtico reto. Posiblemente ese haya sido el más difícil de los problemas con el que he tropezado en la elaboración de este libro.”
― Joseph Campbell, EN BUSCA DE LA FELICIDAD: Mitología y transformación personal (Sabiduría perenne)

“La segunda parte, titulada «El mito vivo», se centra en la psicología fundamental del mito y se deriva de una serie de conferencias pronunciadas, a lo largo de casi una década, bajo el título genérico «Living Your Personal Myth» (un título con el que Campbell, por cierto, nunca estuvo muy de acuerdo).”
― Joseph Campbell, EN BUSCA DE LA FELICIDAD: Mitología y transformación personal (Sabiduría perenne)

“La primera parte del presente volumen, titulada «El hombre y el mito», se ocupa del desarrollo histórico del mito como herramienta para el crecimiento, no de las sociedades, sino de los individuos.”
― Joseph Campbell, EN BUSCA DE LA FELICIDAD: Mitología y transformación personal (Sabiduría perenne)

“El mito, en su opinión, establece el marco de referencia del desarrollo y la transformación personal y la comprensión del modo en que mitos y símbolos afectan a la mente individual proporciona la clave para vivir en armonía con la propia naturaleza o, dicho en otras palabras, señala el camino que conduce a la felicidad.”
― Joseph Campbell, EN BUSCA DE LA FELICIDAD: Mitología y transformación personal (Sabiduría perenne)

“Cuando esos símbolos desaparecen, perdemos el vínculo que comunica nuestra conciencia despierta con nuestra vida espiritual más profunda. Tenemos que reactivar el símbolo, insuflarle nueva vida y descubrir lo que significa para relacionarlo, de algún modo, con nosotros.”
― Joseph Campbell, EN BUSCA DE LA FELICIDAD: Mitología y transformación personal (Sabiduría perenne)