If you can see your path clearly in front of you, it's probably someone else's. Joseph Campbell More Quotes by Joseph Campbell More Quotes From Joseph Campbell The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; the powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky; yet for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades. Joseph Campbell veilsadventurewatches ......the interesting thing was that the Roman Catholic monks and the Buddhist monks had no trouble understanding each other. Each of them was seeking the same experience and knew that the experience was incommunicable. The communication is only an effort to bring the hearer to the edge of the abyss; it is a signpost, not the thing itself. But the secular clergy reads the communication and gets stuck with the letter, and that's where you have the conflict. Joseph Campbell buddhistcommunicationinteresting You know, I didn't write my books for critics and scholars. I wrote them for students and artists. When I hear how much my work has meant to them--well, I can't tell you how happy that makes me. That means that this great stuff of myth, which I have been so privileged to work with, will be kept alive for a whole new generation. That's the function of the artists, you know, to reinterpret the old stories and make them come alive again, in poetry, painting, and now in movies. Joseph Campbell writingmeanbook When you are required to exhibit strength, it comes. Joseph Campbell being-strongstrengthinspirational All men are capable of reason. That is the fundamental principle of democracy Because everybody's mind is capable of true knowledge, you don't have to have a special authority, or a special revelation telling you that this is the way things should be. Joseph Campbell democracymindmen If you have a sacred place and use it, take advantage of it, something will happen. Joseph Campbell sacredadvantageuse Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told. Joseph Campbell buddhistmindlying It [music] has an awakening function. Life is a rhythm. Art is an organization of rhythms. Music is a fundamental art that touches our will system. In Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea he speaks of music as the sound that awakens the will. The rhythm of the music awakens certain life rhythms, ways of living and experiencing life. So it's an awakener of life. Joseph Campbell organizationinspirationalart Mythology helps you to identify the mysteries of the energies pouring through you. Therein lies your eternity. Joseph Campbell pouringenergylying What is unknown is the fulfillment of your own unique life, the likes of which has never existed on earth. And you are the only one who can do it. People can give you clues how to fall and when to stand, and when you are falling and when you are standing, this only you can know. And in the way of your own talents is the only way to do it. Joseph Campbell uniquepeoplefall Where there is a way or path, it is someone else's. Each of us has to find his own way. Joseph Campbell pathway 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 dreamdoedoors The psychological dangers through which earlier generations were guided by the symbols and spiritual exercises of their mythological and religious inheritance, we today (in so far as we are unbelievers, or, if believers, in so far as our inherited beliefs fail to represent the real problems of contemporary life) must face alone, or, at best with only tentative, impromptu, and not often very effective guidance. This is our problem as modern, "enlightened" individuals, for whom all gods and devils have been rationalized out of existence. Joseph Campbell religiousspiritualinspirational Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life. Joseph Campbell cluespirituallife Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of vocabularies of reason and coercion. Joseph Campbell vocabularycoercionreason The adventure of the hero is the adventure of being alive Joseph Campbell positiveinspirationallife You know the rule: If you are falling, dive. Do the thing that has to be done. Joseph Campbell doneknowsfall The entire heavenly realm is within us, but to find it we have to relate to what's outside. Joseph Campbell heavenlyrelaterealms What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There's always the possibility of fiasco. But there's also the possibility of bliss. Joseph Campbell good-lifemilitaryhero I prefer the gradual path My feeling is that mythic forms reveal themselves gradually in the course of your life if you know what they are and how to pay attention to their emergence. My own initiation into the mythic depths of the unconscious has been through the mind, through the books that surround me in this library. I have recognized in my quest all the stages of the hero's journey. I had my calls to adventure, my guides, demons, and illuminations. Joseph Campbell heroadventurebook
