Author of quotes: Joseph Campbell

How, then, to teach again that which has already been taught correctly, but which has been misunderstood thousands of times over the millennia of prudent thoughtlessness of mankind? This is the last most difficult feat of the hero. How to translate into the language of the ordinary world of light the revelations of darkness that cannot be translated into human language? How to represent a three-dimensional form on a two-dimensional surface or a multi-dimensional meaning in a three-dimensional image? How to translate into yes and no truths that shatter like fragments and become meaningless with every attempt to define them through pairs of opposites? How to convey to people who are accustomed to relying solely on their feelings, the message of emptiness, from which all living things will be born?

Truly, even the gods of the saved skies, merging their voices in a friendly choir, greet the human hero who has penetrated above them, into that emptiness that was their source, their life.

The agony of overcoming one's own limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, philosophy and the ascetic disciplines are the tools to help the individual overcome his limitations and step into the endless realms of knowledge. Crossing threshold after threshold, overcoming dragon after dragon, he comprehends the greatness of the deity, which he asks to fulfill his cherished desire, he grows and spreads, acquiring cosmic proportions. And then, finally, the mind breaks through the limiting sphere of the cosmos to a consciousness that transcends all perceptions of form - all symbols, all gods - to the realization of the inevitable emptiness.

A dream is a personified myth, and a myth is a depersonalized dream; both myth and dream symbolically express the dynamics of the psyche in the same way. But in the dream, the images are distorted by the specific problems of the dreamer, while in the myth their solutions are presented in a form that is directly unambiguous for all mankind.

Mythology is psychology misread as biography, history and cosmology. A modern psychologist can restore its true denotations, as if returning to the original language, and thus save and preserve for the modern world a rich and expressive document about the deep forces of human character.

The most important function of myth and ritual is to carry the human spirit forward with the help of symbols, to resist those habitual human ideas that bind us to the past.

Like happy families, all myths and saved worlds are alike.

A slip can open the way to a new destiny.

Everyone carries everything in himself, and therefore everything can be sought and found in oneself. Differences of sex, age and sphere of activity are not essential for human character; these are just the costumes we put on while we are performing on the stage of the world. The inner image of a person should not be confused with his clothes.

The pain of overcoming one's own limitations is the pain of spiritual growth.

I myself have not long got married, mostly because it would prevent me from reading.

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
The purpose of life is to teach his heart to beat in tune with the Universe, to bring your inner world into harmony with the World.

Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.
Your life is a result of your own actions. Don't blame anyone but yourself.

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.
Life has no meaning. You yourself give it meaning. The meaning of life is what you call it. Life itself is the meaning.