Joseph Campbell

Now I found it in writing sentences. You can write that sentence in a way that you would have written it last year. Or you can write it in the way of the exquisite nuance that is sriting in your mind now. But that takes a lot of ... waiting for the right word to come.

Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted.

The rise and fall of civilizations in the long, broad course of history can be seen to have been largely a function of the integrity and cogency of their supporting canons of myth; for not authority but aspiration is the motivator, builder, and transformer of civilization.

All life stinks and you must embrace that with compassion.

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.

If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That's why it's your path.

Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold.

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of life

If you want to know what a given society believes in, look at what its largest buildings are devoted to.

All societies are evil, sorrowful, inequitable; and so they will always be. So if you really want to help this world, what you will have to teach is how to live in it. And that no one can do who has not himself learned how to live in it in the joyful sorrow and sorrowful joy of the knowledge of life as it is.

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it.

Man actually needs the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.

Every hero must have the courage to be alone, to take the journey for himself.

Change the focus of the eye. When you have done that, then the end of the world as you formerly knew it will have occurred, and you will experience the radiance of the divine presence everywhere, here and now.

Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end.

The function of ritual, as I understand it, is to give form to human life, not in the way of a mere surface arrangement, but in depth.

When you are on your path, and it is truly your path, doors will open for you where there were no doors for someone else.

The eternal principle, which never was born, never will die: it is in all things: it is in you now. You are the wave on the face of the ocean. When the wave is gone, is the water gone? Has anything happened? Nothing has happened. It is a play, a game, a dance.

The world, as we know it, is coming to an end. The world as the center of the universe, the world divided from the heavens, the world bound by horizons in which love is reserved for members of the in-group: that is the world that is passing away. Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and complacency are coming to an end.

It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward.

Money is congealed energy, and releasing it releases life's possibilities.