Quote

Through dreams a door is opened to mythology, since myths are of the nature of dreams, and that, as dreams arise from an inward world unknown to waking consciousness, so do myths: so, indeed, does life.

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
Doors
Opened
Consciousness
Waking
Since
Unknown
Nature
Arise
Dream
Myth
Doe
Indeed
Myths
Life
Door
Mythology
World
Dreams
Inward

More quotes by Joseph Campbell

Image
Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.
Joseph Campbell
Image
Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.
Joseph Campbell
Image
Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths. We must be willing to get rid of the life we planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. I have bought this wonderful machine — a computer ... it seems to me to be an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy.
Joseph Campbell
Image
I think of compassion as the fundamental religious experience and, unless that is there, you have nothing.
Joseph Campbell
Image
It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
Joseph Campbell
Image
There are now no more horizons. And with the dissolution of horizons we have experienced and are experiencing collisions, terrific collisions, not only of peoples but also of their mythologies. It is as when dividing panels are withdrawn from between chambers of very hot and very cold airs: there is a rush of these forces together.
Joseph Campbell
Image
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
Image
Once you know the difference between right and wrong, you have lots fewer decisions to make.
Joseph Campbell
Image
The notion of this universe, its heavens, hells, and everything within it, as a great dream dreamed by a single being in which all the dream characters are dreaming too, has in India enchanted and shaped the entire civilization.
Joseph Campbell
Image
Sin always finds it's root in our own selfish desires and self-gratification.
Joseph Campbell
Image
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
Image
If you follow your bliss you will find a path laid out before you that has been waiting for you all along and you will begin to live the life you ought to be living.
Joseph Campbell
Image
All we really want to do is dance.
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
The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for.
Joseph Campbell
Image
Make your god transparent to the transcendent, and it doesn't matter what his name is.
Joseph Campbell
Image
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.
Joseph Campbell
Image
The idea of the Bodhisattva is the one who out of his realization of transcendence participates in the world. The imitation of Christ is joyful participation in the sorrows of the world.
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
The Deadheads are doing the dance of life and this I would say is the answer to the atom bomb.
Joseph Campbell