“I think it's important to live life with a knowledge of its mystery, and of your own mystery.”

— Joseph Campbell , The Power of Myth

The Power of Myth (1988)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I think it's important to live life with a knowledge of its mystery, and of your own mystery." by Joseph Campbell?

Joseph Campbell 140

American mythologist, writer and lecturer 1904–1987

Related quotes

“Ask yourself if there is any explanation of the mystery of your own life and death.”

Wilkie Collins (1824–1889) British writer

The Haunted Hotel: A Mystery of Modern Venice [Rose-Belford, 1878] ( p.288 https://books.google.com/books?id=zyFjcZUO3CUC&pg=PA288)
Also in The Supernatural And English fiction by Glen Cavaliero [Oxford University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-192-12607-5] (p. 39)

“People think they know the mystery of living in your skin. They don't. There's no one who knows except the person who carts it around her own self.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

“By unnerving definition, anything that the heart has chosen for its own mysterious reasons it can always unchoose later—again, for its own mysterious reasons.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

“We do not have a complete and satisfying knowledge of the world. We are reduced to the simple conclusion that everywhere in the world there is life like ourselves and that all life is shrouded in mystery. A true acquaintance with the world consists in being filled with a sense of the mystery of existence and life. This mystery becomes only more mysterious with every advance in scientific research. To be filled with the mystery of life is like that which is called in the language of mysticism the "wise ignorance," an ignorance which is nonetheless knowledge of the essential.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 304

“Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved”

Adriana Trigiani (1970) American film director

Source: Big Stone Gap

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Attributed to Merton in a number of sources, the earliest located being Studia mystica, Volumes 5-6 (1982), p. 76 http://books.google.com/books?id=59EYAAAAIAAJ&q=%22problem+to+be+solved%22#search_anchor. This does not attribute a direct quote to Merton, but says "To use another of Merton's favorite distinctions, for Furlong Merton's life is seen principally as a problem to be solved, which it was, in the final analysis, successfully, rather than a mystery to be lived". The next-earliest source located is the 1998 book The Artist's Way at Work: Riding the Dragon by Mark Bryan and Julia Cameron, which attributes the exact quote to Merton on p. 152 http://books.google.com/books?id=CghAQDPahhcC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA152#v=onepage&q&f=false. In reality this seems to be a slightly altered version of the quote "The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved; it is a reality to be experienced" which appeared in the 1928 book The Conquest of Illusion by Jacobus Johannes Leeuw, p. 9 http://books.google.com/books?id=OFdVAAAAMAAJ&q=%22not+a+problem+to+be+solved%22#search_anchor.
Misattributed

“You, too, have mysteries of your own.”

Hermann Hesse book Demian

Source: Demian (1919), p. 181
Context: You, too, have mysteries of your own. I know that you must have dreams that you don't tell me. I don't want to know them. But I can tell you: live those dreams, play with them, build altars to them. It is not yet the ideal but it points in the right direction. Whether you and I and a few others will renew the world someday remains to be seen. But within ourselves we must renew it each day, otherwise we just aren't serious. Don't forget that!

“I grew up knowing I could have had a million different lives. It makes your life mysterious and your imagination go wild.”

KT Tunstall (1975) Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist

On knowing that she was adopted.
KTTunstall.com

“Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what’s known as infinity.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

"Anubis" to the Sphinx, in Act 2 of The Infernal Machine (1932); Collected Works Vol. 5 (1948)

“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

“I think it's important to live life with a knowledge of its mystery, and of your own mystery.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Joseph Campbell 140

Related quotes

Related topics