Joseph Campbell

When you are falling --- Dive!

What you have to do, you do with play. The universe is God’s play.

The departure from the world is regarded not as a fault, but as the first step into that noble path at the remotest turn of which illumination is to be won.

It's a shame to waste [the uniqueness that is you], by doing what someone else has done.

Each of us has capacities. The real trick is knowing the machinery of the boat in which you are crossing the channel.

I think of mythology as the homeland of the muses, the inspirers of art, the inspirers of poetry. To see life as a poem and yourself participating in a poem is what the myth does for you.

Suddenly you’re ripped into being alive. And life is pain, and life is suffering, and life is horror, but my god you’re alive and its spectacular.

Behind all these manifestations is the one radiance, which shines through all things. The function of art is to reveal this radiance through the created object.

Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. _x000D_ The damned thing in the cave that was so dreaded has become the center.

Follow your bliss. The heroic life is living the individual adventure. There is no security in following the call to adventure. Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be.

Questing... is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself.

When you see the earth from the moon, you don't see any divisions there of nations or states. _x000D_ This might be the symbol, really, for the new mythology to come. _x000D_ That is the country that we are going to be celebrating. _x000D_ And those are the people that we are one with.

In choosing your god, you choose your way of looking at the universe. There are plenty of Gods. Choose yours.

You are more than you think you are. There are dimensions of your being and a potential for realization and consciousness that are not included in your concept of yourself. Your life is much deeper and broader than you conceive it to be here. What you are living is but a fractional inkling of what is really within you, what gives you life, breadth, and depth.

Out of perfection nothing can be made. Every process involves breaking something up.

You know the rule: If you are falling, dive. Do the thing that has to be done.

This is all I ever wanted - to help students and artists see myth as a reflection of the one sublime adventure of life, and then to breathe new life into it.

Anything you do has a still point. When you are in that still point, you can perform maximally.

The priests used to say that faith can move mountains, and nobody believed them. Today the scientists say that they can level mountains, and nobody doubts them.

If marriage isn't a first priority in your life, you're not married.

Essentially, mythologies are enormous poems that are renditions of insights, giving some sense of the marvel, the miracle and wonder of life.