The function of (heroic) symbols is to give you a sense of Aha! Yes, I know what it is, it's myself. — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of vocabularies of reason and coercion. — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward. — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
This is an important point about symbols: they do not refer to historical events; they refer through historical events to spiritual or… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
Life lives on life. This is the sense of the symbol of the Ouroboros, the serpent biting its tail. Everything that lives… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
When you see the earth from the moon, you don't see any divisions there of nations or states. This might be the… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
Myths are so intimately bound to culture, time, and place that unless the symbols, the metaphors, are kept alive by constant recreation… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
Clearly, mythology is no toy for children. Nor is it a matter of archaic, merely scholarly concern, of no moment to modern… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
I think of mythology as a function of biology; the energies of the body are the energies that move the imagination. These… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
The psychological dangers through which earlier generations were guided by the symbols and spiritual exercises of their mythological and religious inheritance, we… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
The real important function of the church is to present the symbol, to perform the rite, to let you behold this divine… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
The wonder is that the characteristic efficacy to touch and inspire deep creative centers dwells in the smallest nursery fairy tale-as the… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
There are mythologies that are scattered, broken up, all around us. We stand on what I call the terminal moraine of shattered… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share Image
If a person does not listen to the demands of their own spiritual and heart life and insists on a certain program, you're going… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
The last act in the biography of the hero is that of the death or departure. — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
The eternal principle, which never was born, never will die: it is in all things: it is in you now. You are the wave… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
How do you find the divine power in yourself? The word enthusiasm means 'filled with a god,' so what makes you enthusiastic? Follow it.… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
What we're learning in our schools is not the wisdom of life. We're learning technologies, we're getting information. There's a curious reluctance on the… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
The fall [of your soul] from perfection into duality...was naturally followed by the discovery of the duality of good and evil...This is the Biblical… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
So that's what destiny is: simply the fulfillment of the potentialites of the energies in your own system. — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
Your ego is your embodiment and your self is your potentiality and that's what you listen to when you listen for the voice of… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
When you follow your bliss a kind of track opens up, that's always been there, waiting for you. And the life that you should… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
I think of mythology as the homeland of the muses, the inspirers of art, the inspirers of poetry. To see life as a poem… — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
Both the artist and the lover know that perfection is not loveable. It is the clumsiness of a fault that makes a person lovable. — Joseph Campbell Copy Share
