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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.

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
Contrary
Aspect
Experience
Death
Life
Affirmation
Unconditional
Accepted

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The conquest of fear yields the courage of life. That is the cardinal initiation of every heroic adventure-- fearlessness and achievement.
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It's characteristic of democracy that majority rule is understood as being effective not only in politics but also in thinking. In thinking, of course, the majority is always wrong.
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Sin always finds it's root in our own selfish desires and self-gratification.
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If you want to find out what it means to have a society without any rituals, read the New York Times.
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Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and door will open where you didn't know they were going to be.
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How do you find the divine power in yourself? The word enthusiasm means 'filled with a god,' so what makes you enthusiastic? Follow it. So I have a little word: follow your bliss. The bliss is the message of God to yourself. That's where your life is.
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If you really want to help this world, what you will have to teach is how to live in it.
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Hell is life drying up.
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The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.
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We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.
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Perhaps some of us have to go through dark and devious ways before we can find the river of peace or the highroad to the soul's destination.
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To find your own way is to follow your bliss. This involves analysis, watching yourself and seeing where real deep bliss is -- not the quick little excitement , but the real deep, life-filling bliss.
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Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself... The problem is not to blame or explain but to handle the life that arises... If you say no to a single factor in your life, you have unraveled the whole thing... The demon that you swallow gives you its power, and the greater life's pain, the greater life's reply.
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It is not society which is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse.
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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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Whatever the hell happens, say, 'This is what I need.'
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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.
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The familiar life horizon has been outgrown: the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand.
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Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.
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Life is a guy trying to play a violin solo in public, while learning the music and his instrument at the same time.
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