Joseph Campbell Quotes

Our attitude in the face of life's challenges determines our suffering or our freedom.

I don't see life as an opportunity to see how far you can go in the pursuit of pain, although I think I've challenged it a bit.

You cannot control all of what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward all of what happens to you...You can choose to be happy and grateful rather than disappointed and bitter, by focusing on how it could have turned out worse but didn't, rather than how it could have turned out better but didn't.

Yes, hardships come. But I see in my life and in the lives of others how often something that does not have to be held as a hardship is dealt with by the mind as though it is.

If you are pitched into misery, remember that your days on this earth are counted and you might as well make the best of those you have left.

Nobody's life is a bed of roses. We all have crosses to bear, and we all just do our best. I would never claim to have the worst situation. There are many widows, and many people dying of AIDS, many people killed in Lebanon, people starving all over the planet. So we have to count our lucky stars.

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.

Life stinks, but that doesn't mean you don't enjoy it.

I never question God. Sometimes I say, 'Why me? Why do I have such a hard life? Why do I have this disease? Why do I have siblings who died?' But then I think and say, 'Why not me?'

Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise.

As much as a given condition can be bad at a moment in time, it could be a lot worse.

It isn’t defeat, but rather your mental attitude toward it, that whips you.

Part of our good consists in the endeavor to do sorrows away, and in the power to sustain them when the endeavor fails,--to bear them nobly, and thus help others to bear them as well.

Most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.

How can you and I really expect to glide naively through life, as if to say, 'Lord, give me experience, but not grief, not sorrow, not pain, not opposition, not betrayal, and certainly not to be forsaken. Keep from me, Lord, all those experiences which made Thee what Thou art! Then, let me come and dwell with Thee and fully share Thy joy!'

Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with a few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. Physically it is extraordinarily arduous, and morally it is killing...You get your happiness where you can. You reach a point where you're at the bottom of hell, yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face, and you feel you're the luckiest person on earth. Why? Because at your feet you have a tiny dead fish

Every day is a masterpiece, even if it crushes you.

It's easy to have a great attitude when things are going our way...It's when difficult challenges rise before us...that attitude becomes the difference maker.

Set your mind that no matter what is going on in your life, you will have a good attitude.

No misery or bad situation is ever infinite or final until we make a conscious decision for it to be so. ~ Inferno

If you bear the cross unwillingly, you make it a burden, and load yourself more heavily; but you must bear it.

Boy, it's a tough planet if you want it to be. But a great planet if you let it.

The more you complain the longer God lets you live

If circumstances are bad and you have to bear them, do not make them a part of yourself.

Life is cruel? Compared to what?