Nikos Kazantzakis

I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I felt deep within me that 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

In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

One of man's greatest obligations is anger.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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 realise - sometimes with astonishment - how happy we had been.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I am a mariner of Odysseus with heart of fire but with mind ruthless and clear.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

We are not simple people who believe in happiness; nor weaklings who crumple to the ground in distress at the first reverse; nor skeptics observing the bloody effort of marching humanity from the lofty heights of a mocking, sterile wit. Believing in the fight, though we entertain no illusions about it, we are armed against every disappointment.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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

We, who are dying, are doing better, than they, who will live. For Crete doesn't need householders, she needs madmen like us. These madmen make Crete immortal.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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

I said to the almond tree: "Speak to me of God."and the almond tree blossomed.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Every perfect traveller always creates the country where he travels.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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

You gave me your curse, holy Fathers. I give you a blessing: May you be as moral and religious as I am.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

With clarity and quiet, I look upon the world and say: All that I see, hear, taste, smell, and touch are the creations of my mind. The stars shine in my brain; ideas, men, animals browse in my temporal head; songs and weeping fill the twisted shells of my ears and storm the air for a moment.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

"I do not know whether behind appearances there lives and moves a secret essence superior to me. Nor do I ask; I do not care. I create phenomena in swarms, and paint with a full palette a gigantic and gaudy curtain before the abyss. Do not say, "Draw the curtain that I may see the painting." The curtain is the painting.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

To SEE and accept the boundaries of the human mind without vain rebellion, and in these severe limitations to work ceaselessly without protest — this is where man's first duty lies.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I subdue matter and force it to become my mind's good medium. I rejoice in plants, in animals, in man and in gods, as though they were my children. I feel all the universe nestling about me and following me as though it were my own body.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I will not accept boundaries; appearances cannot contain me; I choke! To bleed in this agony, and to live it profoundly, is the second duty. The mind is patient and adjusts itself, it likes to play; but the heart grows savage and will not condescend to play; it stifles and rushes to tear apart the nets of necessity.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Behind all appearances, I divine a struggling essence. I want to merge with it. I feel that behind appearances this struggling essence is also striving to merge with my heart. But the body stands between us and separates us. The mind stands between us and separates us.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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

I am a weak, ephemeral creature made of mud and dream. But I feel all the powers of the universe whirling within me.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

The moment is ripe: leave the heart and the mind behind you, go forward, take the third step. Conquer the last, the greatest temptation of all: Hope. This is the third duty.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I hold the brimming wineglass and relive the toils of my grandfathers and great-grandfathers. The sweat of my labor runs down like a fountain from my tall, intoxicated brow. I am a sack filled with meat and bones, blood, sweat, and tears, desires and visions.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Where are we going? Do not ask! Ascend, descend. There is no beginning and no end. Only this present moment exists, full of bitterness, full of sweetness, and I rejoice in it all.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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

Amidst our greatest happiness someone within us cries out: "I am in pain! I want to escape your happiness! I am stifling!" Amidst our deepest despair someone within us cries out: "I do not despair! I fight on! I grasp at your head, I unsheathe myself from your body, I detach myself from the earth, I cannot be contained in brains, in names, in deeds!"

— Nikos Kazantzakis

This is the moment of greatest crisis. This is the signal for the March to begin. If you do not hear this Cry tearing at your entrails, do not set out.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Someone within me is struggling to lift a great weight, to cast off the mind and flesh by overcoming habit, laziness, necessity. I do not know from where he comes or where he goes. I clutch at his onward march in my ephemeral breast, I listen to his panting struggle, I shudder when I touch him.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I am not the light, I am the night; but a flame stabs through my entrails and consumes me. I am the night devoured by light.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Happiness is a simple everyday miracle, like water, and we are not aware of it.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

"Love responsibility. Say: "It is my duty, and mine alone, to save the earth. If it is not saved, then I alone am to blame." "Love each man according to his contribution in the struggle. Do not seek friends; seek comrades-in-arms.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I am NOT nothing! A vaporous phosphorescence on a damp meadow, a miserable worm that crawls and loves, that shouts and talks about wings for an hour or two until his mouth is blocked with earth. The dark powers give no other answer. But within me a deathless Cry, superior to me, continues to shout. For whether I want to or not, I am also, without doubt, a part of the visible and the invisible Universe. We are one.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I am not alone in my fear, nor alone in my hope, nor alone in my shouting. A tremendous host, an onrush of the Universe fears, hopes, and shouts with me. I am an improvised bridge, and when Someone passes over me, I crumble away behind Him.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

You are not free. Myriad invisible hands hold your hands and direct them. When you rise in anger, a great-grandfather froths at your mouth; when you make love, an ancestral caveman growls with lust; when you sleep, tombs open in your memory till your skull brims with ghosts.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

"Do not die that we may not die," the dead cry out within you. "We had no time to enjoy the women we desired; be in time, sleep with them! We had no time to turn our thoughts into deeds; turn them into deeds! We had no time to grasp and to crystallize the face of our hope; make it firm!" … But you must choose with care whom to hurl down again into the chasms of your blood, and whom you shall permit to mount once more into the light and the earth.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Enlighten the dark blood of your ancestors, shape their cries into speech, purify their will, widen their narrow, unmerciful brows. This is your second duty. For you are not only a slave. As soon as you were born, a new possibility was born with you, a free heartbeat stormed through the great sunless heart of your race.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Everything you do reverberates throughout a thousand destinies. As you walk, you cut open and create that river bed into which the stream of your descendants shall enter and flow.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

You are not a miserable and momentary body; behind your fleeting mask of clay, a thousand-year-old face lies in ambush. Your passions and your thoughts are older than your heart or brain.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Your first duty, in completing your service to your race, is to feel within you all your ancestors. Your second duty is to throw light on their onrush and to continue their work. Your third duty is to pass on to your son the great mandate to surpass you.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

It is not you talking. Nor is it your race only which shouts within you, for all the innumerable races of mankind shout and rush within you: white, yellow, black. Free yourself from race also; fight to live through the whole struggle of man.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Look upon men and pity them. Look at yourself amid all men and pity yourself. In the obscure dusk of life we touch and fumble at each other, we ask questions, we listen, we shout for help.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

The centuries are thick, dark waves that rise and fall, steeped in blood. Every moment is a gaping abyss. Gaze on the dark sea without staggering, confront the abyss every moment without illusion or impudence or fear. … But this is not enough; take a further step: battle to give meaning to the confused struggles of man.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

The heart unites whatever the mind separates, pushes on beyond the arena of necessity and transmutes the struggle into love.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Gather together in your heart all terrors, recompose all details. Salvation is a circle; close it!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

The entire Earth, with her trees and her waters, with her animals, with her men and her gods, calls from within your breast. Earth rises up in your brains and sees her entire body for the first time.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I recall an endless desert of infinite and flaming matter. I am burning! I pass through immeasurable, unorganized time, completely done, despairing, crying in the wilderness. And slowly the flame subsides, the womb of matter grows cool, the stone comes alive, breaks open, and a small green leaf uncurls into the air, trembling. It clutches the soil, steadies itself, raises its head and hands, grasps the air, the water, the light, and sucks at the Universe.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

The bodies breathe, feed, store up strength, and then in an erotic moment are shattered, are spent and drained utterly, that they may bequeath their spirit to their sons. What spirit? The drive upward!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Behind the stream of my mind and body, behind the stream of my race and all mankind, behind the stream of plants and animals, I watch with trembling the Invisible, treading on all visible things and ascending. His face is without laughter, dark and silent, beyond joy and sorrow, beyond hope.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

It is as though we had buried Someone we thought dead, and now hear him calling in the night: Help me! Heaving and panting, he raises the gravestone of our soul and body higher and still higher, breathing more freely at every moment. Every word, every deed, every thought is the heavy gravestone he is forever trying to lift. And my own body and all the visible world, all heaven and earth, are the gravestone which God is struggling to heave upward.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

God huddles in a knot in every cell of flesh. God struggles in every thing, his hands flung upward toward the light. What light? Beyond and above every thing!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Pain is not the only essence of our God, nor is hope in a future life or a life on this earth, neither joy nor victory. Every religion that holds up to worship one of these primordial aspects of God narrows our hearts and our minds. The essence of our God is STRUGGLE. Pain, joy, and hope unfold and labor within this struggle, world without end.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

From every joy and pain a hope leaps out eternally to escape this pain and to widen joy. And again the ascent begins — which is pain — and joy is reborn and new hope springs up once more. The circle never closes. It is not a circle, but a spiral which ascends eternally, ever widening, enfolding and unfolding the triune struggle.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

God confronts me with terror and love — for I am His only hope — and says: "This Ecstatic, who gives birth to all things, who rejoices in them all and yet destroys them, this Ecstatic is my Son!"

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I said to the almond tree, 'Friend, speak to me of God,' and the almond tree blossomed.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

The ultimate most holy form of theory is action. Not to look on passively while the spark leaps from generation to generation, but to leap and to burn with it!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Life is a crusade in the service of God. Whether we wished to or not, we set out as crusaders to free — not the Holy Sepulchre — but that God buried in matter and in our souls. Every body, every soul is a Holy Sepulcher. Every seed of grain is a Holy Sepulchre; let us free it! The brain is a Holy Sepulchre, God sprawls within it and battles with death; let us run to his assistance!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

My prayer is not the whimpering of a beggar nor a confession of love. Nor is it the petty reckoning of a small tradesman: Give me and I shall give you. My prayer is the report of a soldier to his general: This is what I did today, this is how I fought to save the entire battle in my own sector, these are the obstacles I encountered, this is how I plan to fight tomorrow.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

My God and I are horsemen galloping in the burning sun or under drizzling rain. Pale, starving, but unsubdued, we ride and converse. Our love for each other is rough and ready, we sit at the same table, we drink the same wine in this low tavern of life.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Humanity is such a lump of mud, each one of us is such a lump of mud. What is our duty? To struggle so that a small flower may blossom from the dunghill of our flesh and mind. Out of things and flesh, out of hunger, out of fear, out of virtue and sin, struggle continually to create God.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

How does the light of a star set out and plunge into black eternity in its immortal course? The star dies, but the light never dies; such also is the cry of freedom. And this Cry, abandoning to the earth the body which gave it birth, proceeds and labors eternally.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

A vehement eros runs through the Universe. It is like the ether: harder than steel, softer than air. It cuts through and passes beyond all things, it flees and escapes.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

At every moment of crisis an array of men risk their lives in the front ranks as standard-bearers of God to fight and take upon themselves the whole responsibility of the battle. Today God is the common worker made savage by toil and rage and hunger

— Nikos Kazantzakis

This is our epoch, good or bad, beautiful or ugly, rich or poor — we did not choose it. This is our epoch, the air we breathe, the mud given us, the bread, the fire, the spirit! Let us accept Necessity courageously. It is our lot to have fallen on fighting times. Let us tighten our belts, let us arm our hearts, our minds, and our bodies. Let us take our place in battle!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

The essence of our God is obscure. It ripens continuously; perhaps victory is strenghened with our every valorous deed, but perhaps even all these agonizing struggles toward deliverance and victory are inferior to the nature of divinity. Whatever it might be, we fight on without certainty, and our virtue, uncertain of any rewards, acquires a profound nobility.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

One power descends and wants to scatter, to come to a standstill, to die. The other power ascends and strives for freedom, for immortality. These two armies, the dark and the light, the armies of life and of death, collide eternally.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Contend with the powers of nature, force them to the yoke of superior purpose. Free that spirit which struggles within them and longs to mingle with that spirit which struggles within you.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

We do not only free God by battling and subduing the visible world about us; we also create God. "Open your eyes," God shouts; "I want to see! Prick up your ears, I want to hear! March in the front ranks: you are my head!"

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Every man has his own circle composed of trees, animals, men, ideas, and he is in duty bound to save this circle. He, and no one else. If he does not save it, he cannot be saved. These are the labors each man is given and is in duty bound to complete before he dies. He may not otherwise be saved. For his own soul is scattered and enslaved in these things about him, in trees, in animals, in men, in ideas, and it is his own soul he saves by completing these labors.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

If you are a man of learning, fight in the skull, kill ideas and create new ones. God hides in every idea as in every cell of flesh. Smash the idea, set him free! Give him another, a more spacious idea in which to dwell.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Profound and incommensurable is the worth of this flowing world: God clings to it and ascends, God feeds upon it and increases.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

How can you reach the womb of the Abyss to make it fruitful? This cannot be expressed, cannot be narrowed into words, cannot be subjected to laws; every man is completely free and has his own special liberation. No form of instruction exists, no Savior exists to open up the road. No road exists to be opened.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Happiness is a simple everyday miracle, like water, and we are not aware of it.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

BLESSED BE ALL THOSE WHO HEAR AND RUSH TO FREE YOU, LORD, AND WHO SAY: "ONLY YOU AND I EXIST." DOES NOT EXIST!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

True teachers use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

O Sun, great Oriental, my proud mind's golden cap,in song throughout our lives, and so rejoice our hearts.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I'll tell you who you are. Some turn their food into fat and manure, some into work and good humour, and others, I'm told, into God. So there must be three sorts of men.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

With silent strides Odysseus then shot back the bolt,sit crouched and weeping by the dark sea's foaming edge.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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

A woman's body is a dark and monstrous mystery;two rivers crash, and woe to him who slips and falls!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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

Death's dry bones glowed with light in the erotic dark"With one sweet kiss, dear wife, we've conquered conquering Death!"

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Everything in this world has a hidden meaning.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

The rosy mountain peaks laughed like high lustrous thoughts,and joyed to feel its warm rays falling on her frozen palms.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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

High up where the poor sat, the people quaked with fear:while at the crossroads stood the human heart, and swayed.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Nothing is nearer to us than heaven. The earth is beneath our feet, and we tread upon it, but heaven is within us.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Thus night with all her snares passed through the upper worldwrapped as a gift in the green leaves of opiate dream.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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 realise - sometimes with astonishment - how happy we had been.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Death gestured with his hands and bade the king thrice welcome.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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

Her green eyes fluttered swiftly twice or thrice, then glazed,and retched up all her soul in lumps of clotting blood.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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

Speak straight and clear! I only hear that manly prayerwhich like a huge fist breaks my head against the stones.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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

Who holds a sword is tempted, who has youth must play,he who does not fear death on earth does not fear God.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Alas for him who seeks salvation in good only!together like two mighty wings and lift him high.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Life is a crusade in the service of God. Whether we wished to or not, we set out as crusaders to free - not the Holy Sepulcher - but that God buried in matter and in our souls.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

But we, O blockhead, with dogged spite and armored lovebut God is clay in my ten fingers, and I mould him!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

The human soul is heavy, clumsy, held in the mud of the flesh. Its perceptions are still coarse and brutish. It can divine nothing clearly, nothing with certainty.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Blessed are those eyes that have seen more water than any man!My son, it's death who keeps and pours the deathless waters.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I fight to embrace the entire circle of human activity to the full extent of my ability.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

May he be cursed on earth who gives his trust to virtue,all that I had, I placed on virtue, and lost the game!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I'll tell you who you are. Some turn their food into fat and manure, some into work and good humour, and others, I'm told, into God. So there must be three sorts of men.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

A slave's soul has no worth, my brothers; it lacks strengthToday I'll write a hymn to God and pray for this great grace.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Life is a crusade in the service of God. Whether we wished to or not, we set out as crusaders to free - not the Holy Sepulcher - but that God buried in matter and in our souls.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Cursed be all those on land and sea who eat their fill,and turns not into freedom's cry, the murderer's ruthless knife!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Fools, art is a heavy task, more heavy than gold crowns;like the high mountains, have no fear of age or death.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I said to the almond tree, 'Friend, speak to me of God,' and the almond tree blossomed.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Comrades, I've voyaged long and far on sea and soul,than that wind-headed, babbling, blind bitch-hound called Hope!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Monarch of earth, I shall confess my secret craft:and kindle whatever light I found to burst in flame.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

There is only one woman in the world. One woman, with many faces.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Crocodiles sweetly shut their lidded eyes, and yawned,new flesh would sprout once more and then be munched anew.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Descend you weary-laden, descend in the dark earth,a lean, voracious crow to peck his heart out bit by bit.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I knew that no matter what door you knock on in a Cretan village, it will be opened for you. A meal will be served in your honor, and you will sleep between the best sheets in the house. In Crete, the stranger is still the unknown god. Before him, all doors and all hearts are opened.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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

I hate all virtues based on food and bloated bellies;I like to name that flame which burns within me God!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Let your youth have free reign. It won't come again, so be bold, and no repenting.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I've fought with men and gods, I've weighed them well and foundand man's impalpable soul still yet more firm than air!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

In order to mount to the Cross, the summit of sacrifice, and to God, the summit of immateriality, Christ passed through all the stages which the man who struggles passes through.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

To cleave that sea in the gentle autumnal season, murmuring the name of each islet, is to my mind the joy most apt to transport the heart of man into paradise.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

God hates a half-devil ten times more than an arch-devil!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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

Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to unfasten your belt and look for a fight.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it we do suddenly realize — sometimes with astonishment — how happy we had been.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

The struggle between God and man breaks out in everyone, together with the longing for reconciliation... God does not love weak souls and flabby flesh. The spirit desires to wrestle with flesh which is strong and full of resistance. It is a carnivorous bird which is incessantly hungry; it eats flesh and, by assimilating it, makes it disappear.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. . . . All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Behind each woman rises the austere, sacred and mysterious face of Aphrodite.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Every village has its simpleton, and if one does not exist they invent one to pass the time.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I felt deep within me that 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

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

My 'Report to Greco' is not an autobiography.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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

The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

A weak soul does not have the endurance to resist the flesh for very long. It grows heavy, becomes flesh itself, and the contest ends. But among responsible men, men who keep their eyes riveted day and night upon the Supreme Duty, the conflict between flesh and spirit breaks out mercilessly and may last until death.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

The highest point a man can obtain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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

This is the Supreme Duty of the man who struggles — to set out for the lofty peak which Christ, the first-born sone of salvation, attained. How can we begin? If we are to follow him we must have a profound knowledge of his conflict, we must relive his anguish: his victory over the blossoming snares of the earth, his sacrifice of the great and small joys of men and his ascent from sacrifice to sacrifice, exploit to exploit, to martyrdom's summit, the Cross.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Every man is half God, half man; he is both spirit and flesh. That is why the mystery of Christ is not simply a mystery for a particular creed: It is universal.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I wanted to offer a supreme model to the man who struggles; I wanted to show him that he must not fear pain, temptation or death — because all three can be conquered, all three have already been conquered.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

What a miracle life is and how alike are all souls when they send their roots down deep and meet and are one!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

This book is not a biography; it is the confession of every man who struggles. In publishing it I have fulfilled my duty, the duty of a person who struggled much, was embittered in his life,

— Nikos Kazantzakis

That part of Christ's nature which was profoundly human helps us to understand him and love him and to pursue his Passion as though it were our own. If he had not within him this warm human element, he would never be able to touch our hearts with such assurance and tenderness; he would not be able to become a model for our lives.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

The more devils we have within us, the more chance we have to form angels.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

One of man's greatest obligations is anger.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Do you believe in dreams, Uncle Simeon? I do; I believe in nothing else. One night I dreamed that invisible enemies had me tied to a dead cypress. Long red arrows were sticking into me from my head to my feet, and the blood was flowing. On my head they had placed a crown of thorns, and intertwined with the thorns were fiery letters which said: "Saint Blasphemer." I am Saint Blasphemer, Rabbi Simeon. So you'd better not ask me anything else, or I'll start my blasphemies.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

There's a devil inside me which cries, "You're not the son of the Carpenter, you're the son of King David! You are not a man, you are the Son of man whom Daniel prophesied." And still more: "The Son of God! And still more: God!"

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Outside the wind of Jehovah still beat on the door, trying to enter. There was no other sound. Not a jackal on the earth, nor a crow in the air. Every living thing cowered in fear, waiting for the Lord's anger to pass.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I said to the almond tree, 'Friend, speak to me of God,' and the almond tree blossomed.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

If you love me, be patient. Look at the trees. Are they in a hurry to ripen their fruit?

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I possess no weapon but love. With that I have come to do battle. Help me!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I said only one word, brought only one message: Love. Love — nothing else.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

How can anyone see the only way the world can be saved and not be forced to weep?

— Nikos Kazantzakis

My entire soul is a cry, and all my work the commentary on that cry.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Every man worthy of being called a son of man bears his cross and mounts his Golgotha. Many, indeed most, reach the first or second step, collapse pantingly in the middle of the journey, and do not attain the summit of Golgotha, in other words the summit of their duty: to be crucified, resurrected, and to save theirs souls. Afraid of crucifixion, they grow fainthearted; they do not know that the cross is the only path to resurrection. There is no other path.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Three kinds of souls, three prayers:3) Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

"Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality," says one of my favorite Byzantine mystics. I did this when a child; I do it now as well in the most creative moments of my life.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Every word is an adamantine shell which encloses a great explosive force. To discover its meaning you must let it burst inside you like a bomb and in this way liberate the soul which it imprisons.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

How difficult, how extremely difficult for the soul to sever itself from its body the world: from mountains, seas, cities, people. The soul is an octopus and these are its tentacles. … No force anywhere on earth is as imperialistic as the human soul. It occupies and is occupied in turn, but it always considers its empire too narrow. Suffocating, it desires to conquer the world in order to breathe freely.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

As long as our souls remain strong, that is all that matters; as long as they don't decline. Because with the fall of certain souls in this world, the world itself will collapse. These are the pillars which support it. They are few, but enough.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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

I heard the bells from the future churches, the children playing and laughing in the schoolyards … and here was an almond tree in bloom before me: I must reach out and cut a flowering branch. For, by believing passionately in something which still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired, whatever we have not irrigated with our blood to such a degree that it becomes strong enough to stride across the somber threshold of nonexistence.

— Nikos Kazantzakis