Quote

What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light, or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle?

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
Bulb
Bulbs
Carries
Carrie
Vehicle
Light

More quotes by Joseph Campbell

Image
Our life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. That's why it's good to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower.
Joseph Campbell
Image
This is an important point about symbols: they do not refer to historical events they refer through historical events to spiritual or psychological principles and powers that are of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and that are everywhere.
Joseph Campbell
Image
The way to find out about your happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you really are happy-not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what I call following your bliss.
Joseph Campbell
Image
The folktale is the primer of the picture-language of the soul.
Joseph Campbell
Image
With the moon walk, the religious myth that sustained these notions could no longer be held. With our view of earthrise, we could see that the earth and the heavens were no longer divided but that the earth is in the heavens. (105)
Joseph Campbell
Image
The ultimate dreamer is Vishnu floating on the cosmic Milky Ocean, couched upon the coils of the abyssal serpent Ananta, the meaning of whose name is Unending. In the foreground stand the five Pandava brothers, heroes of the epic Mahabharata, with Draupadi, their wife: allegorically, she is the mind and they are the five senses.
Joseph Campbell
Image
The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
Joseph Campbell
Image
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
Image
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
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
Sin always finds it's root in our own selfish desires and self-gratification.
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
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
Image
For the bliss of the deep abode is not lightly abandoned in favor of the self-scattering of the wakened state.
Joseph Campbell
Image
The best advise is to take it all as if it had been your intention.
Joseph Campbell
Image
One great thing about growing old is that nothing is going to lead to anything. Everything is of the moment.
Joseph Campbell
Image
It is not society which is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse.
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
Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.
Joseph Campbell
Image
Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.
Joseph Campbell