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
The most serious point in the case is the disposition of the child." What on earth has that to do with it?" I ejaculated. My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining insight as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid. I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.
Arthur Conan DoyleRead
It is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical will live the relation to another as something alive.
Rainer Maria RilkeRead
I get a little heated when I talk about the past. But I wanted to be clear - I'm not mad at anybody - not anymore.
Dave ChappelleRead
Her dignity consists in being unknown to the world; her glory is in the esteem of her husband; her pleasures in the happiness of her family.
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead
It is well known to all great men, that by conferring an obligation they do not always procure a friend, but are certain of creating many enemies.
Henry FieldingRead
No woman will ever satisfy me. I know that now, and I would never try to deny it. But this is actually okay, because I will never satisfy a woman, either. Should I be writing such thoughts? Perhaps not. Perhaps it’s a bad idea. I can definitely foresee a scenario where that first paragraph could come back to haunt me, especially if I somehow became marginally famous.
Chuck KlostermanRead