Joseph Campbell Quotes
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.
We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.
Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again.
The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.
Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be.
Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning, and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.
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.
Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.
If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.
You enter the forestat the darkest point, where there isno path. Where there is a way or path, it is someone else’s path.You are not on your own path. If you follow someone else’s way, you are not going to realize your potential.
The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.
The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.
People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.
We’re in a freefall into future. We don’t know where we’re going. Things are changing so fast, and always when you’re going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It’s a very interesting shift of perspective and that’s all it is… joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes.
Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.
I don’t have to have faith, I have experience.
Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.
The demon that you can swallow gives you its power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply.
If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.
If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.
Nobody is capable of free speech unless he knows how to use language, and such knowledge is not a gift: it has to learned and worked at.
We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.
The ultimate aim of the quest must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others.
People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.
When you realize that eternity is right here now, that it is within your possibility to experience the eternity of your own truth and being, then you grasp the following: That which you arewas never born and will never die.
Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes?
We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us — the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
All life stinks. That’s the biology’s bargain, that there’s no free lunch.
Love is a friendship set to music.
A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.
The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.
Nature is the visible expression of the invisible God.
Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
The hero’s journey always begins with the call. One way or another, a guide must come to say, ‘Look, you’re in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip. There is a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being, that’s not been touched. So you’re at home here? Well, there’s not enough of you there.’ And so it starts.
Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get rid of the mystery of existence.
The greatest romance is with the Infinite.
You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path. Wherever there is a way or path, it is someone else’s path. You are not on your own path. If you follow someone else’s way, you are not going to realize your potential.
If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.
One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.
Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
If you are falling…dive.