Quote

Myths are so intimately bound to culture, time, and place that unless the symbols, the metaphors, are kept alive by constant recreation through the arts, the life just slips away from them.

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
Away
Arts
Intimately
Art
Bounds
Metaphors
Place
Myth
Recreation
Time
Kept
Myths
Life
Constant
Slips
Unless
Metaphor
Alive
Bound
Culture
Symbols

More quotes by Joseph Campbell

Image
The hero, therefore, is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations.
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
Every hero must have the courage to be alone, to take the journey for himself.
Joseph Campbell
Image
Life is but a mask worn on the face of death. And is death, then, but another mask? 'How many can say,' asks the Aztec poet, 'that there is, or is not, a truth beyond?'
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
An old Apache storyteller reminds us
Joseph Campbell
Image
The function of the artist is the mythologization of the culture and the world. In the visual arts there were two men whose work handled mythological themes in a marvelous way: Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso.
Joseph Campbell
Image
Participate joyfully in the sorrows of life
Joseph Campbell
Image
The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change.
Joseph Campbell
Image
Any god who can invent hell is no candidate for the Salvation Army
Joseph Campbell
Image
The unconscious sends all sorts of vapors, odd beings, terrors, and deluding images up into the mind - whether in dream, broad daylight, or insanity: for the human kingdom, beneath the floor of the comparatively neat little dwelling that we call our consciousness, goes down into unsuspected Aladdin caves.
Joseph Campbell
Image
Anything you do has a still point. When you are in that still point, you can perform maximally.
Joseph Campbell
Image
The Garden is a metaphor for the following: our minds, and our thinking in terms of pairs of opposites--man and woman, good and evil--are as holy as that of a god. (50)
Joseph Campbell
Image
Your adventure has to be coming out of your own interior. If you are ready for it then doors will open where there were no doors before, and where there would not be doors for anyone else. And you must have courage. It's the call to adventure, which means there is no security, no rules.
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
Myth is what we call other people's religion.
Joseph Campbell
Image
Respect your curses, for they are the instruments of your destiny.
Joseph Campbell
Image
The problem in our society and in our schools is to inclulcate, without overdoing it, the notion of education, as in the Latin educere--to lead, to bring out what is in someone rather than merely to indoctrinate him/her from the outside. (89)
Joseph Campbell
Image
When people get married because they think it's a long-time love affair, they'll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is a recognition of a spiritual identity.
Joseph Campbell
Image
If you can see your path clearly in front of you, it's probably someone else's.
Joseph Campbell