Quote

Love is the burning point of life, and since all life is sorrowful, so is love. The stronger the love, the more the pain. Love itself is pain, you might say -the pain of being truly alive.

Joseph Campbell

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Since
Point
Pain
Might
Sorrowful
Love
Burning
Life
Stronger
Truly
Alive

More quotes by Joseph Campbell

Image
God is an intelligible sphere-a sphere known to mind, not to the senses-whose center is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere.
Joseph Campbell
Image
It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
Joseph Campbell
Image
One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of it.
Joseph Campbell
Image
Sin always finds it's root in our own selfish desires and self-gratification.
Joseph Campbell
Image
Every hero must have the courage to be alone, to take the journey for himself.
Joseph Campbell
Image
Respect your curses, for they are the instruments of your destiny.
Joseph Campbell
Image
If you want the whole thing, the gods will give it to you. But you must be ready for it.
Joseph Campbell
Image
When you are falling --- Dive!
Joseph Campbell
Image
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
Image
Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.
Joseph Campbell
Image
A one sentence definition of mythology? Mythology is what we call someone else's religion.
Joseph Campbell
Image
The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves.
Joseph Campbell
Image
Freud tells us to blame our parents for all the shortcomings of our life, Marx tells us to blame the upper class of our society. But the only one to blame is oneself.
Joseph Campbell
Image
The images of Myth are reflections of Spiritual and Depth potentialities of every one of us. Through contemplating those we evoke those powers in our own lives to operate through ourselves.
Joseph Campbell
Image
Change the focus of the eye. When you have done that, then the end of the world as you formerly knew it will have occurred, and you will experience the radiance of the divine presence everywhere, here and now.
Joseph Campbell
Image
The purpose of the journey is compassion. When you have come past the pairs of opposites, you have reached compassion.
Joseph Campbell
Image
There is no make-believe about heaven, future bliss, and compensation, to alleviate the bitter majesty, but only utter darkness, the void of unfulfillment, to receive and eat back the lives that have been tossed forth from the womb only to fail.
Joseph Campbell
Image
How teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand thousand times, throughout the millenniums of mankind's prudent folly? That is the hero's ultimate difficult task.
Joseph Campbell
Image
Eternity is not a long time rather, it is another dimension. It is that dimension to which time-thinking shuts us. And so there never was a creation. Rather, there is a continuous creating going on. This energy is pouring into every cell of our being right now, every board and brick of the buildings we sit in, every grain of sand and wisp of wind.
Joseph Campbell
Image
The familiar life horizon has been outgrown: the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand.
Joseph Campbell