Joseph Campbell Quotes

So.  Learning yesterday about the release of the film Finding Joe got me thinking about Joseph Campbell and when I start thinking about something I tend to Google just to see what comes up.  Among other things, lots of quotes.  Many had been put on inspirational posters.  I just might turn some of these into posters myself but today I just want the words to stand on their own.

Things Joseph Campbell said or wrote:

Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.



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



A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.


Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.


It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.

Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.

Original Experience has not been interpreted for you, and so you’ve got to work out life for yourself. Either you can take it or you can’t. You don’t have to go far off the interpreted path to find yourself in very difficult situations. The courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience – that is the hero’s deed.”


The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.



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


When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.


Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.








I think the person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money - has turned himself into a slave.

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.







The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.



Love is a friendship set to music.


Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.




Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.

A one sentence definition of mythology? "Mythology" is what we call someone else's religion

Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.

The cave you most fear to enter contains the greatest treasure.

As a white candle In a holy place, So is the beauty Of an aged face

Marriage is not a simple love affair, it's an ordeal, and the ordeal is the sacrifice of ego to a relationship in which two have become one




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

When we talk about settling the world's problems, we're barking up the wrong tree. The world is perfect. It's a mess. It has always been a mess. We are not going to change it. Our job is to straighten out our own lives.


Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends

Read more...

Finding Joe

I've been itching to get my hands (eyes, ears) on this ever since I first heard about it nearly a year ago.  I have it in my Netflix save section for DVDs not yet available.  I learned today that the DVD is now out but alas I can't send for it while I'm out of town.

Ah well.  Soon.

But just watching this trailer has woke up my thirst for reading Joseph Campbell again.  It has been over a year since I picked up one of his books to read or browse.  In fact I had Hero With a Thousand Faces out of the library as I prepped for Script Frenzy last March.

I own his Mask of God series, for books tracing the myths from Paleolithic times to the present.  I've owned if for fifteen years but unlike HWTF I've never actually finished any of them.  I've started them over and over and each time reach 100 to 200 pages in only to get distracted.

As I was packing and nnpacking them for our move the week after Christmas I promised myself I would make this the year I would read them front to back.  I came close to bringing them with me but I had been given a sort of dare by my sister to limit the number of books I brought with me. She held out promise of unlimited access to the three libraries she has cards for--the Longview Public Library,  the Vancouver Public Library system and the Lower Columbia College..  

Since I thought this was going to be a four week visit and I had over 1000 ebooks on my netbook already (have tripled that since) I rose to the challenge and brought only four.  All of them reference books related to one or more of my fiction WIP.

My visit was extended repeatedly and now I''ve been here at Mom's for 9 weeks and anticipate at least 2 more.  I had such plans for 2012 after we learned the move would be happening but most I had to put on hold until I got home.  Now the year is a quarter gone.

Ah, well.  Soon.

Read more...