Joseph Campbell Wisdom Quotes

A collection of inspirational quotes & sayings by Joseph Campbell, an American professor, writer, scholar and orator in the fields of mythology and comparative religion.

Follow your bliss.
If you do follow your bliss,
you put yourself on a kind of track
that has been there all the while waiting for you,
and the life you ought to be living
is the one you are living.
When you can see that,
you begin to meet people
who are in the field of your bliss,
and they open the doors to you.
I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid,
and doors will open
where you didn't know they were going to be.
If you follow your bliss,
doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else.





People say that what we're seeking is a meaning for life.
I don't think that's what we're really seeking.
I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive,
so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.





Find a place (inside) where there's joy,
and the joy will burn out the pain.





The goal of life
is to make your heartbeat
match the beat of the universe,
to match your nature with Nature.





It is by going down into the abyss
that we recover the treasures of life.
Where you stumble,
there lies your treasure.





Opportunities
to find deeper powers within ourselves
come when life seems most challenging.





We must be willing to get rid of
the life we've planned,
so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
The old skin has to be shed
before the new one can come.





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.

About Joseph Campbell (1904-1987)
American professor, writer, scholar and orator in the fields of mythology and comparative religion. He passionately studied myth and its similar, seemingly cohesive threads among all human cultures, ie that all myths originate from a common source - the communal past of the human race. He believed all the religions of the world, all the rituals and deities, to be “masks” of the same transcendent truth which is “unknowable.” He often quoted a Vedic Scripture saying, "Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names".

He is author of several books, including:
. The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1948)
. The Masks of God: Creative Mythology (1995)
. Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation (2004)
. The Power of Myth (1991)

Campbell encouraged others to read all the myths of the ages and peoples as he did - "Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people's myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts -- but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message."

For more information about Joseph Campbell, visit the Joseph Campbell Foundation Website.