Joseph Campbell Quotes

Sometimes you have to take the focus off of you and put it on someone else and it's funny what you can accomplish and how much strength you really have.

He who doesn't consider himself is seldom considerate of others.

Just the service aspect of running a nonprofit is so gratifying because it takes the attention off yourself. I'm not an acting monk or anything. I'm not, like, the most well-adjusted actor. But it's really designed to focus on yourself, or it can be. So it's good to have something else to focus on that reminds you that it's not always about you.

Before my accident I was a little too... selfish and self-absorbed and for me, to now be at the place where I can kinda give back and inspire people. I'm blessed. I'm really blessed.

I've certainly had a lot of experiences in my life where I was much too self-centered.

Compassion is the key to living outside the confines of your lower self.

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

The individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference. He has it within his means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter.

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

It is only in helping someone else to awake that I awake.

I'm my mother's son, so when it comes to altruism and understanding how to do things to benefit a person's life... the women in my life have been much better than the men.

I'll admit that I'm self-centered - all of us are - but I can also be external and giving and listening and empathetic and all that sort of stuff.

Getting past my early 20s, I feel a bit more maturity and responsibility about that stuff. You get a good feeling from doing something good. You see a kid and you make his day, you realise the power of it. Whereas before, I was like, 'That's cool, whatever.' But now, that's what I'm most appreciative of.

When your inner mantra becomes 'How may I serve?' rather than 'What am I going to get?' and 'Who do I need to defeat?,' you start to see the unfolding of God in everything and everyone around you and you shift into higher consciousness.

Who am I helping, what am I breaking, what am I giving, what am I taking?

Cultivating a generous spirit starts with mindfulness. Mindfulness, simply stated, means paying attention to what is actually happening; it's about what is really going on.

Love places someone else in the centre of your being and your own self is blurred.

Good character consists of recognizing the selfishness that inheres in each of us and trying to balance it against the altruism to which we should all aspire. It is a difficult balance to strike, but no definition of goodness can be complete without it.

Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.

My mother taught me that to maximize your philanthropic potential, you need to constantly challenge your capabilities and put yourself in situations that are not always comfortable. Through her example, I discovered that there is no more beautiful way to live a life than to live a life of service.

It is by not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you might somehow be happy. Until you make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will always be searching and lost.

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.

I think was overly empathetic for a while in my life.

I think I'm still figuring out how to be a little less selfish.

Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer; into a selflessness which links us with all humanity.