The first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrous nature of the earthly human realm as well as its glory, the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think they know how the universe could have been had they created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without death, are unfit for illumination.
Joseph CampbellWhenever men have looked for something solid on which to found their lives, they have chosen not the facts in which the world abounds, but the myths of an immemorial imagination.
Joseph CampbellYou know, I didn't write my books for critics and scholars. I wrote them for students and artists. When I hear how much my work has meant to them--well, I can't tell you how happy that makes me. That means that this great stuff of myth, which I have been so privileged to work with, will be kept alive for a whole new generation. That's the function of the artists, you know, to reinterpret the old stories and make them come alive again, in poetry, painting, and now in movies.
Joseph CampbellLife will always be sorrowful. We can't change it, but we can change our attitude toward it.
Joseph CampbellOne can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of it.
Joseph CampbellThe mind of man, cleansed of secondary and merely temporal concerns, beholds with the radiance of a cleansed mirror a reflection of the rational mind of God.
Joseph CampbellThe first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrous nature of the earthly human realm as well as its glory, the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think they know how the universe could have been had they created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without death, are unfit for illumination.
Joseph Campbell