- [from Tom Brown's "Laconics"] I do not love you, Dr. Fell/ the reason why I cannot tell/ but this I know and know full well/ I do not love you Dr. Fell.
- If you're falling, dive.
- Follow your Bliss.
- Then Caesar said to Cleopatra: "Don't worry about him, he's British! He thinks the rules of his small tribe are the rules of the Universe!"
- The Mystic knows how to swim in the waters in which the Schizophrenic drowns.
- The presence of a vital person vitalizes.
- [Ulysees] 'A shout in the street' . . . is God. Stephen's shift of emphasis is a very important theme: God isn't the transcendent one 'out there'; God is the immanent principle right here in everything, in everybody. In the dog that is going to be walking about on the shore, God (dog in reverse) is right there in him. God is a shout in the street: God is immanent everywhere and in everything. Mr. Deasy speaks of the process of God in history. There is no process, Stephen says, God is present. This resembles the idea in the Gnostic Gospel According to Thomas: 'The kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth and men do not see it.' (Thomas 99:16-18) That revelation of the Father's kingdom is also the radiance of esthetic arrest. Stephen says, 'History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.' His quest is for that eternal core, that essence of all things which moves through all history--the metamorphosis I spoke of--that one spirit that lives through all the metamorphoses of all things.
- The unity of the race of man, not only in its biology but also in its spiritual history, which has everywhere unfolded in the manner of a single symphony [...], is irresistibly advancing to some kind of mighty climax, out of which the next great movement will emerge
- The brain is a secondary organ.
- You can tell what's informing a Society by what's the biggest building in the place.
- I have this idea of Eros as the biological urge, the zeal of the organs for each other.
- There's a lot of self-denial involved in becoming a success. And it sounds terrible to say it to people at your stage of life, but it's not worth it. [laughter and applause]
- Almost everything I learned as a child is now out of date.
- No tribal rite has yet been recorded which attempts to keep winter from descending; on the contrary: the rites all prepare the community to endure, together with the rest of nature, the season of the terrible cold.
- In the absence of an effective general mythology, each of us has his private, unrecognized, rudimentary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dreams.
- It's a wonderful, wonderful opera, except that it hurts.
- Computers are like Old Testament gods: lots of rules and no mercy.
- Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.
- The way to find out about your happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you really are happy-not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what I call "following your bliss."
- One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.
- Unlike heroes such as Prometheus or Jesus, we're not going on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there's no doubt about it. The world without spirit is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who's on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it's alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself.
- Masks of God. [A repurposed fragment of a G.K.Chesterton quote: Chesterton was implying God was under the mask of all individuals in humanity, Campbell implies one God being perceived in multitudinous ways]
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