Joseph Campbell - Quodid

About

Picture of Joseph Campbell

Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human condition. Campbell's best-known work is his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), in which he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero shared by world mythologies, termed the monomyth.

Quotes from Joseph Campbell

God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It’s as simple as that.

—Joseph Campbell

understanding God religion thought

We keep thinking of deity as a kind of fact, somewhere; God as a fact. God is simply our own notion of something that is symbolic of transcendence and mystery. The mystery is what’s important.

—Joseph Campbell

God mystery deity transcendence

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.

—Joseph Campbell

life acceptance planning

The ultimate aim of the quest… must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but wisdom and power to serve others.

—Joseph Campbell

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.

—Joseph Campbell

Our schizophrenic patient is actually experiencing inadvertently that same beatific ocean deep which the yogi and saint are ever striving to enjoy: except that, whereas they are swimming in it, he is drowning.

—Joseph Campbell

spirituality schizophrenia stability drowning

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.

—Joseph Campbell

Marriage is not a love affair. A love affair has to do with immediate personal satisfaction. Marriage is an ordeal; it means yielding, time and again. That's why it's a sacrament: you give up your personal simplicity to participate. And you are not giving to the other person; you are giving to the relationship. Because you are not giving to the other person, it is not impoverishing—it is life-building, life-fostering, enriching.

—Joseph Campbell

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning… a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be.

—Joseph Campbell

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

—Joseph Campbell

If we think of ourselves as coming out of the earth, rather than having been thrown in here from somewhere else, we see that we are the earth; we are the consciousness of the earth. These are the eyes of the earth. And this is the voice of the earth.

—Joseph Campbell

perspective eyes earth consciousness

Love is a friendship set to music.

—Joseph Campbell

To expect too much compassion from yourself might be a little destructive of your own existence. Even so, at least make a try, and this goes not only for individuals but also for life itself. It's so easy. It's a fashionable idiocy of youth to say the world has not come up to your expectations. "What? I was coming, and this is all they could prepare for me?" Throw it out. Have compassion for the world and those in it.

—Joseph Campbell

existence compassion

Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.

—Joseph Campbell