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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.

Joseph Campbell

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Joseph Campbell
Age: 83 †
Born: 1904
Born: March 26
Died: 1987
Died: October 30
Academic
Anthropologist
Essayist
Ethnologist
Historian
Historian Of Religion
Lecturer
Mythologist
Orator
Researcher
Short Story Writer
White Plains
New York
Joseph John Campbell
Joseph Cambell
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Without
Encouraging
Life
Cancer
Meaning
Bring
Alive
Whatever
Inspirational

More quotes by Joseph Campbell

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People who don't have a concept of the whole can do very unfortunate things.
Joseph Campbell
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You don't have to believe that there was a King Arthur to get the significance of those stories, but Christians say we have to believe there was a Christ, or the miracles don't make sense.
Joseph Campbell
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And so Galahad decided that it would be a disgrace to set off on a quest with the other knights. Alone he would enter the dark forest where there was no path. This is the myth of The Hero's Journey.
Joseph Campbell
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It's a shame to waste [the uniqueness that is you], by doing what someone else has done.
Joseph Campbell
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We are kept out of the Garden by our own fear and desire in relation to what we think to be the goods of our life.
Joseph Campbell
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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
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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
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The Deadheads are doing the dance of life and this I would say is the answer to the atom bomb.
Joseph Campbell
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Any god who can invent hell is no candidate for the Salvation Army
Joseph Campbell
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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
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Regrets are illuminations come too late.
Joseph Campbell
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So that's what destiny is: simply the fulfillment of the potentialites of the energies in your own system.
Joseph Campbell
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This is all I ever wanted - to help students and artists see myth as a reflection of the one sublime adventure of life, and then to breathe new life into it.
Joseph Campbell
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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
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Poets are simply those who have made a profession and a lifestyle of being in touch with their bliss.
Joseph Campbell
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The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet.
Joseph Campbell
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Anything you do has a still point. When you are in that still point, you can perform maximally.
Joseph Campbell
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Thinking in mythological terms helps to put you in accord with the inevitables of this vale of tears. You learn to recognize the positive values in what appear to be the negative moments and aspects of your life. The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.
Joseph Campbell
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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
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What gods are there, what gods have there ever been, that were not from man's imagination?
Joseph Campbell