Joseph Campbell

Eternity is not future or past. Eternity is a dimension of now.

Joseph Campbell

Every moment is utterly unique and will not be continued in eternity. This fact gives life its poignancy and should concentrate your attention on what you are experiencing now.

Joseph Campbell

Every people is a chosen people in its own mind. And it is rather amusing that their name for themselves usually means mankind.

Joseph Campbell

He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty and life and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable.

Joseph Campbell

I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I’ve never met an ordinary man, woman or child.

Joseph Campbell

I always tell my students follow your bliss. When you have that feeling then stay with it and don’t let anyone throw you off.

Joseph Campbell

I don’t believe in being interested in a subject just because it’s said to be important. I believe in being caught by it somehow or other.

Joseph Campbell

I have found that you have only to take that one step toward the gods, and they will then take ten steps toward you. That step, the heroic first step of the journey, is out of, or over the edge of, your boundaries, and it often must be taken before you know that you will.

Joseph Campbell

I think what we are looking for is a way of experiencing the world that will open to us the transcendent that informs it, and at the same time forms ourselves within it. That is what people want. That is what the soul asks for.

Joseph Campbell

If myth is translated into literal fact, then myth is a lie. But if you read it as a reflection of the world inside you, then it’s true. Myth is the penultimate truth.

Joseph Campbell