"Art is the clothing of a revelation"
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Quote collection
Joseph Campbell quotes (page 13 of 28)
551 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The fates lead him who will; him who won't they drag."
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"Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed."
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"So that's what destiny is: simply the fulfillment of the potentialites of the energies in your own system."
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"The insecure way is the secure way."
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"Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of vocabularies of reason and coercion."
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"Instead of clearing his own heart the zealot tries to clear the world."
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"Mephistopheles, the machine man, can provide us with all the means, and is thus likely to determine the aims of life as well. But of course the characteristic of Faust, which makes him eligible to be saved, is that he seeks aims that are not those of the machine."
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"......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."
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"The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light."
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"Economics and politics are the governing powers of life today, and that's why everything is so screwy."
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"The adventure of the hero is the adventure of being alive"
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"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."
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"Oh my God, does art engender humanity? It awakens your humanity. But humanity has nothing to do with political theory. Political theory is in the interests of one group of humanity, or one ideal for humanity. But humanity-my heavens, that's what proper art renders. We have a paradox. Going into the deepest aspects of inner space connects you with something that is the most vital for the outer realm."
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"The conquest of the fear of death is the recovery of life's joy. One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of life. Life in its becoming is always shedding death, and on the point of death. The conquest of fear yields the courage of life. That is the cardinal initiation of every heroic adventure - fearlessness and achievement."
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"Now all the myths that you have heard and that resonate with you, those are the elements from round about that you are building into a form in your life. The thing worth considering is how they relate to each other in your context, not how they relate to something out there-how they were relevant on the North American prairies or in the Asian jungles hundreds of years agon, but how they are relevant now-unless by contemplating their former meaning you can begin to amplify your own understanding of the role they play in your life."
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"How to get rid of ego as dictator and turn it into messenger and servant and scout, to be in your service, is the trick."
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"When you follow your bliss, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you."
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"If you have a sacred place and use it, take advantage of it, something will happen."
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"If you're going to have a story, have a big story, or none at all."
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