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One of our problems today is that we are not well acquainted with the literature of the spirit. We re interested in the news of the day and the problems of the hour.

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
Hours
Spirit
Acquainted
Problem
Spirituality
Today
Hour
Wells
Interested
Well
News
Problems
Literature

More quotes by Joseph Campbell

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There's 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, and become a realization of your own personal myth.
Joseph Campbell
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There is no way you can use the word “reality” without quotation marks around it.
Joseph Campbell
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The seizure of passionate love can be, in such a context, only illicit, breaking in upon the order of one's dutiful life in virtue as a devastating storm.
Joseph Campbell
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A bit of advice Given to a young Native American At the time of his initiation: As you go the way of life, You will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think.
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Whatever the hell happens, say, 'This is what I need.'
Joseph Campbell
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It may be a species of impudence to think that the way you understand God is the way God is. (60).
Joseph Campbell
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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
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Follow your bliss. The heroic life is living the individual adventure. There is no security in following the call to adventure. Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be.
Joseph Campbell
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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
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If you want the whole thing, the gods will give it to you. But you must be ready for it.
Joseph Campbell
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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
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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
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The schizophrenic is drowning in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight. Edgar Cayce made the same observation in his readings
Joseph Campbell
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God is an intelligible sphere-a sphere known to mind, not to the senses-whose center is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere.
Joseph Campbell
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We're all seeking...the rapture of being alive.
Joseph Campbell
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I think the person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money - has turned himself into a slave.
Joseph Campbell
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If you want resurrection, you must have crucifixion... The hoarder, the one in us that wants to keep, to hold on, must be killed.
Joseph Campbell
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Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted.
Joseph Campbell
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Writer’s block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows.
Joseph Campbell
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Perfection isn't human. Human beings are not perfect. What evokes our love--and I mean love, not lust--is the imperfection of the human being. So, when the imperfection of the real person peaks through, say, 'This is a challenge to my compassion.' Then make a try, and something might begin to get going.
Joseph Campbell