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The purpose of the journey is compassion. When you have come past the pairs of opposites, you have reached compassion.

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
Come
Pairs
Reached
Opposites
Compassion
Journey
Purpose
Past

More quotes by Joseph Campbell

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Without passion, men are not willing to pay any price or bear any burden to set the captives free.
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The hero, whether god or goddess, man or woman, the figure in a myth or the dreamer of a dream discovers and assimilates his opposite (his own unsuspected self) either by swallowing it or by being swallowed.
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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.
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If you are on the right path you will find that invisible hands are helping.
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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.
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Whatever the hell happens, say, 'This is what I need.'
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You can't have creativity unless you leave behind the bounded, the fixed, all the rules
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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.
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You don't have to believe that there was a King Arthur to get the significance of those stories, but Christians say we have to believe there was a Christ, or the miracles don't make sense.
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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.
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Within the field of a secular society, which is a sort of neutral frame that allows individuals to develop their own lives, so long as they don't annoy their neighbors too much, each of us has an individual myth that's driving us, which we may or may not know.
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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.
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Participate joyfully in the sorrows of life
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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.
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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.
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When an idea is important to a person or culture it will find its way into imagery.
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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.
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Art is the set of wings to carry you out of your own entanglement.
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There's always the possibility of a fiasco. But there's also the possibility of bliss.
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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.
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