Quote

Whenever men have looked for something solid on which to found their lives, they have chosen not the facts in which the world abounds, but the myths of an immemorial imagination.

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
World
Whenever
Looked
Imagination
Abounds
Lives
Immemorial
Facts
Myths
Found
Solid
Something
Myth
Men
Chosen

More quotes by Joseph Campbell

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You yourself are participating in the evil, or you are not alive. Whatever you do is evil for somebody. This is one of the ironies of the whole creation.
Joseph Campbell
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We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.
Joseph Campbell
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It is not only that there is no hiding place for the gods from the searching telescope and microscope there is no such society any more as the gods once supported.
Joseph Campbell
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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
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When you no longer are compelled by desire and fear . . . when you have seen the radiance in eternity from all forms of time . . . when you follow your bliss . . . doors will open where you would not have thought there were doors . . . and the world will step in and help.
Joseph Campbell
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The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
Joseph Campbell
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The theme of the Grail is the bringing of life into what is known as 'the wasteland.' The wasteland is the preliminary theme to which the Grail is the answer. . . It's the world of people living inauthentic lives - doing what they are supposed to do.
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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The perfect human being is uninteresting-the Buddha who leaves the world, you know. It is the imperfections of life that are lovable.
Joseph Campbell
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The inner world is the world of your requirements and your energies and your structure and your possibilities that meets the outer world. And the outer world is the field of your incarnation. That’s where you are. You’ve got to keep both going. As Novalis said, ‘The seat of the soul is there where the inner and outer worlds meet.
Joseph Campbell
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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
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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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The goal is to live with God like composure on the full rush of energy, like Dionysus riding the leopard, without being torn to pieces.
Joseph Campbell
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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
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God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.
Joseph Campbell
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You are the Hero of your own Story.
Joseph Campbell
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Regrets are illuminations come too late.
Joseph Campbell
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Once you know the difference between right and wrong, you have lots fewer decisions to make.
Joseph Campbell
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Awe is what moves us forward.
Joseph Campbell
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I don’t think there is any such thing as an ordinary mortal. Everybody has his own possibility of rapture in the experience of life. All he has to do is recognize it and then cultivate it and get going with it. I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I’ve never met an ordinary man, woman, or child.
Joseph Campbell