Joseph Campbell
American writer, scholar of comparative mythology, and one of the most influential interpreters of the world's spiritual traditions in the twentieth century. Born in 1904 in White Plains, New York, he taught literature at Sarah Lawrence College for nearly four decades and produced a body of work — most famously The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) and the four-volume Masks of God (1959-1968) — that mapped the deep structural unity beneath the world's mythologies. His PBS conversation series with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth (1988), introduced his work to millions and made phrases like 'follow your bliss' and 'the hero's journey' part of common cultural vocabulary. George Lucas's Star Wars, in Lucas's own telling, was structured directly on Campbell's monomyth. He died in 1987 in Honolulu.
quotes in library
Quotes by Joseph Campbell
105 quotes“In the metaphors of myth, the soul finds its true home.”
“The hero of yesterday becomes the tyrant of tomorrow, unless he crucifies himself today.”
“Every story has the same arc. Departure, initiation, return.”
“Where you stumble and fall, there is your treasure.”
“Mythologies are not lies. Mythologies are truth in story form.”
“In the depth of every soul there is the call to the journey.”
“The journey of a thousand stories is a single journey.”
“Bliss is the deep sense of being present.”
“Myth is what you believe to be true that you cannot prove.”
“In every culture, the same story. In every story, the same hero. In every hero, the same call.”
“The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path.”
“Where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god.”
“Where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves.”
“The dance of life — to which we have been called — is here, around us, always.”
“To be human is to be a story-making creature.”
“In every age, the heroes are reborn. In every age, the call is heard.”
“The pearl of great price is at the bottom of the sea. Dive.”
“What is the journey for? To find what you are. What you are has always been there.”
“In every wound is a doorway. In every doorway is a wound.”
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