Top 100 Kazantzakis Quotes
#3. There is only one woman in the world. One woman, with many faces.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#4. - I hope you don't mind my saying so, boss, but I don't think your brain is quite formed yet. How old are you?
- Thirty-five.
- Then it never will be.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#5. Never in my life have I feared death as much as I feared that resurrection.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#6. Ah, if you could dance all that you've just said, then I'd understand.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#8. Luck is blind, they say. It can't see where it's going and keeps running into people ... and the people it knocks into we call lucky! Well, to hell with luck if it's like that, I say!
Nikos Kazantzakis
#9. You do miracles if you concentrate your mind on one thing and one thing only.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#10. How could I, who loved life so intensely, have let myself be entangled for so long in that balderdash of books and paper blackened with ink!
Nikos Kazantzakis
#11. It is impossible for me to remember how many days or weeks went by in this way. Time is round, and it rolls quickly.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#12. I felt this was my duty ... to draw the thick ancestral darkness out of my loins and transform it ... into light.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#13. Be always restless, unsatisfied, unconforming. Whenever a habit becomes convenient, smash it! The greatest sin of all is satisfaction.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#14. As long as there are flowers and children and birds in the world, have no fears: everything will be fine.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#16. Once more there sounded within me the terrible warning that there is only one life for all men, that there is only one life for all men, that there is no other and that all that can be enjoyed must be enjoyed here. In eternity no other chance will be given to us.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#17. God, what is all this talk put out by the popes? Paradise is here, my good man. God, give me no other paradise!
Nikos Kazantzakis
#18. Happiness is a simple everyday miracle, like water, and we are not aware of it.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#19. All the political, social, and economic improvements, all the technical progress cannot have any regenerating significance, so long as our inner life remains as it is at present.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#20. Confucius says: 'Many seek happiness higher than man; others beneath him. But happiness is the
same height as man.' That is true. So there must be a happiness to suit every man's stature.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#21. Our body is a ship that sails on deep blue waters. What is our goal? To be shipwrecked!
Nikos Kazantzakis
#22. Keep your distance, boss! Don't make men too bold, don't go telling them we're equal, we've got the same rights, or they'll go straight and trample on your rights; they'll steal your bread and leave you to die of hunger. Keep your distance, boss, by all the good things I wish you!
Nikos Kazantzakis
#23. How ought we to love God, Father?" he asked in a whisper.
"By loving men, my son"
"And how ought we to love men?"
"By trying to guide them along the right path"
"And what is the right path?"
"The one that rises"
- Nikos Kazanzakis, Christ Recrucified
Nikos Kazantzakis
#25. Happy is the man, I thought, who, before dying, has the good fortune to sail the Aegean sea.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#26. He who is invisible sees more clearly, hears more clearly, and is better able to read the thoughts of men.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#27. We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this circle God. We might have given it any other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#28. If you have faith, a splinter from an old door will become a holy relic. And if you have no faith the entire holy cross will become an old door.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#29. Thus night with all her snares passed through the upper world and baited all heads sweetly, fed all foolish hopes, for night can bring to men all shrewish day denies, wrapped as a gift in the green leaves of opiate dream.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#30. As I watched the seagulls, I thought, That's the road to take; find the absolute rhythm and follow it with absolute trust.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#31. Only after I've seen the visible can I imagine what the invisible is.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#32. We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#33. God changes his appearance every second. Blessed is the man who can recognize him in all his disguises.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#34. May he be cursed on earth who gives his trust to virtue, that bankrupt crone who takes our life's pure gold and gives but bad receipts for payment in the lower world. Ah, passers-by that stroll, travelers that come and go, all that I had, I placed on virtue, and lost the game!
Nikos Kazantzakis
#36. Happy the youth who believes that his duty is to remake the world and bring it more in accord with virtue and justice, more in accord with his own heart. Woe to whoever commences his life without lunacy.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#37. The major and almost only theme of all my work is the struggle of man with "God": the unyielding, inextinguishable struggle of the naked worm called "man" against the terrifying power and darkness of the forces within him and around him.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#38. If they were to ask me what road leads to heaven, I would answer them: the most difficult!
Nikos Kazantzakis
#39. My soul comes from better worlds and I have an incurable homesickness of the stars.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#40. Whoever climbed the Lord's mountain had to possess clean hands and an innocent heart; otherwise the Summit would kill him. Today the doorway is deserted. Soiled hands and sinful hearts are able to pass by without fear, for the Summit kills no longer.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#41. I hate all virtues based on food and bloated bellies; though food and drink are good, I'm better slaked and fed by that inhuman flame which burns in our black bowels. I like to name that flame which burns within me God!
Nikos Kazantzakis
#42. To do the will of God means to do my own most deeply hidden will. Within even the most unworthy of men there is a servant of God, asleep.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#43. Behind each woman rises the austere, sacred and mysterious face of Aphrodite.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#44. I surrender myself to everything. I love, I feel pain, I struggle. The world seems to me wider than the mind, my heart a dark and almighty mystery.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#45. Never in my life had I felt so tangibly and with such astonishment that hate, by passing successively through comprehension, mercy, and sympathy, can be transformed into love.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#46. I possess no weapon but love. With that I have come to do battle. Help me!
Nikos Kazantzakis
#47. My principal anguish, and the wellspring of all my joys and sorrows, has been the incessant merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#48. In religions which have lost their creative spark, the gods eventually become no more than poetic motifs or ornaments for decorating human solitude and walls.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#49. Death's dry bones glowed with light in the erotic dark but he woke not nor felt the two warm bodies merge; the male worm then took heart and in his wife's ear whispered: With one sweet kiss, dear wife, we've conquered conquering Death!
Nikos Kazantzakis
#50. If the soul within us does not change, Judas, the world outside us will never change. The enemy is within, the Romans are within, salvation starts from within!
Nikos Kazantzakis
#51. Alas for him who seeks salvation in good only! Balanced on God's strong shoulders, Good and Evil flap together like two mighty wings and lift him high.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#52. Leave your books alone. Aren't you ashamed? Man is a wild beast, and wild beasts don't read.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#53. Night is a great gift from God" he said."It is the mother of man and comes quietly and tenderly to cover him.It rests its cool hand on his forehead and effaces the day's cares from his body and soul.Brothers its time to surrender ourselves to night's embrace
Nikos Kazantzakis
#54. My son, I carry on as if I should never die.' I replied: 'And I carry on as
if I was going to die any minute.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#55. If I were fire, I would burn; if I were a woodcutter, I would strike. But I am a heart, and I love.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#57. Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and *look* for trouble.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#58. We're going to start with small, easy things; then, little by little we shall try our hand at the big things. And after that, after we finish the big things, we shall undertake the impossible.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#59. There is only one sin god will not forgive Boss, and that is to deny a woman who is in wanting ~ Zorba
Nikos Kazantzakis
#60. ADAM AND EVE, sitting in Paradise, chatting:
"If we could only open the gate and leave," says Eve.
"To go where, my dearest?"
"If we could only open the gate and leave!"
"Outside is sickness, pain, death!"
"If we could only open the gate and leave!
Nikos Kazantzakis
#61. Throughout my life my greatest benefactors have been my dreams and my travels; very few men, living or dead, have helped me in my struggle.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#63. The only thing I know is this: I am full of wounds and still standing on my feet.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#64. When everything goes wrong, what a joy to test your soul and see if it has endurance and courage! An invisible and all-powerful enemy - some call him God, others the Devil, seem to rush upon us to destroy us; but we are not destroyed.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#65. It's possible to save oneself from Satan, Father Francis, but from men - never!
Nikos Kazantzakis
#66. As far as I can see, your lordship's never been hungry, never killed, never stolen. what ever can you know of the world? You've got an innocent's brain and you skin's never felt the sun,
Nikos Kazantzakis
#67. I collect my tools: sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, intellect. Night has fallen ...
Nikos Kazantzakis
#68. There is no harsher means of punishment, than to answer malice with kindness.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#69. This, I thought, is how great visionaries and poets see everything- as if for the first time. Each morning they see a new world before their eyes; they do not really see it, they create it.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#70. May God forgive me, but the letters of the alphabet frighten me terribly. They are sly, shameless demons - and dangerous! You open the inkwell, release them; they run off - and how will you ever get control of them again!
Nikos Kazantzakis
#71. This rebel would but toss his head, and men,slaves,horses, towers ... all the accursed levels above him ... would come tumbling down. God always works in this way. Deep in the foundations of wrong he buries the small despised cry of justice.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#72. What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#73. Let your youth have free reign. It won't come again, so be bold, and no repenting.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#74. The masses do not see the Sirens. They do not hear songs in the air. Blind, deaf, stooping, they pull at their oars in the hold of the earth. But the more select, the captains, harken to a Siren within them ... and royally squander their lives with her.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#75. But how can anyone put a bridle on man's vanity and arrogance? But how can Purity walk the earth without covering her feet with mud?
Nikos Kazantzakis
#76. O Sun, great Oriental, my proud mind's golden cap, I love to wear you cocked askew, to play and burst in song throughout our lives, and so rejoice our hearts.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#77. Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all ... is not to have one.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#78. Two equally steep and bold paths may lead to the same peak. To act as if death did not exist, or to act thinking every minute of death, is perhaps the same thing.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#80. A woman's body is a dark and monstrous mystery; between her supple thighs a heavy whirlpool swirls, two rivers crash, and woe to him who slips and falls!
Nikos Kazantzakis
#81. The sole way to save oneself is to save others. Or to struggle to save others -even that is sufficient.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#82. Man is able, and has the duty, to reach the furthest point on the road he has chosen. Only by means of hope can we attain what is beyond hope.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#83. Before me is the abyss. How can I leap across it? And if I do not leap, how shall I ever be able to reach God?
Nikos Kazantzakis
#84. When everyone drowns and I'm the only one to escape, God is protecting me. When everyone else is saved and I'm the only one to drown, God is protecting me then too.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#86. The highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!
Nikos Kazantzakis
#87. You gave me your curse, holy Fathers. I give you a blessing: May you be as moral and religious as I am.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#88. God sends rain, but He also sends hoods; and when the rain grows heavier, He sends a cave.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#90. No! No! Never acknowledge the limitations of man. Smash all boundaries! Deny whatever your eyes see. Die every moment, but say: Death does not exist.'
Nikos Kazantzakis
#91. All my life, I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point, until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console mankind.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#93. I was happy, I knew that. While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realize - sometimes with astonishment - how happy we had been.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#94. I fight to embrace the entire circle of human activity to the full extent of my ability.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#95. I pity the village where no one is a saint, but I also pity the village where everyone is a saint!
Nikos Kazantzakis
#96. I should learn to run, to wrestle, to swim, to ride horses, to row, to drive a car, to fire a rifle. I should fill my soul with flesh. I should fill my flesh with soul. In fact, I should reconcile at last within me the two internal antagonists.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#97. Madness, Brother Masseo, is the salt which prevents good sense from rotting.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#98. Be sure to live up to your reputation for honesty and goodness, because many souls who believe you to be honest and good have placed themselves in your hands.
Nikos Kazantzakis
#99. Lord, bend me, or I shall rot.
Lord do not bend me too much, for I shall break.
Lord bend me too much, who cares if I break!
Nikos Kazantzakis
#100. God is action, complete with mistakes, fumblings, persistence, agony. God is not the power that has found eternal equilibrium, but the power that is forever breaking every equilibrium, forever searching for a higher one.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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