No tribal rite has yet been recorded which attempts to keep winter from descending; on the contrary: the rites all prepare the community to endure, together with the rest of nature, the season of the terrible cold.
Joseph CampbellRead
In marriage you are not sacrificing yourself to the other person. You are sacrificing yourself to the relationship.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Marriage involves compromise not just for the partner, but for the strength of the relationship itself.
Joseph Campbell emphasizes that in a marriage, the sacrifices made are not merely for the individual partner, but rather for the enhancement and preservation of the relationship as a whole. This perspective highlights that a successful marriage is built on mutual commitment and shared growth, rather than individual loss.
Themes
MarriageRelationshipSacrificeCommitmentLove
In practice
Example use cases
In a wedding speech, you might say, 'As Joseph Campbell wisely pointed out, in marriage we’re not just giving ourselves to our partner, but to the relationship we build together.'
More from Joseph Campbell
All quotes →Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.
Joseph CampbellRead
Christianity isn’t moving people’s lives today. What’s moving people’s lives is the stock market and the baseball scores. What are people excited about? It’s a totally materialistic level that has taken over the world. There isn’t even an ideal that anybody’s fighting for.
Joseph CampbellRead
Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end. The exclusivism of there being only one way in which we can be saved, the idea that there is a single religious group that is in sole possession of the truth—that is the world as we know it that must pass away. What is the kingdom? It lies in our realization of the ubiquity of the divine presence in our neighbors, in our enemies, in all of us.
Joseph CampbellRead
The demon that you can swallow gives you it’s power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply.
Joseph CampbellRead
And if there was no Fall, what then of the need for Redemption? What god was offended and by whom? Some especially touchy cave bear whose skull had been improperly enshrined?
Joseph CampbellRead
Similar quotes
She hardly ever thought of him. He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer.
T. H. WhiteRead
Women are books, and men the readers be.
Benjamin FranklinRead
I'm continually amazed by how many people who appear to be extroverts are actually introverts.
Susan CainRead
Maybe times are never strange to women: it is just one continuous monotonous thing full of the repeated follies of their menfolks.
William FaulknerRead
As for loving woman, I have never understood why some people had a fit. I still don't. It seems fine to me. If an individual is productive responsible, and energetic, why should her choice in a partner make such a fuss? The government is only too happy to take my tax money and yet they uphold legislation that keeps me a second class citizen. Surely, there should be a tax break for those of us who are robbed of full and equal participation and protection in the life of our nation.
Rita Mae BrownRead
Even if a relationship is breakable, it doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile, beautiful, and all the things that we look for.
Taylor SwiftRead