Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes
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
Greek writer
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
Greek writer
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
Greek writer
Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to unfasten your belt and look for a fight.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Greek writer
The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Greek writer
God hates a half-devil ten times more than an arch-devil!
Nikos Kazantzakis
Greek writer
I said to the almond tree, 'Friend, speak to me of God,' and the almond tree blossomed.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Greek writer
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
Greek writer
Happiness is a simple everyday miracle, like water, and we are not aware of it.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Greek writer
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
Greek writer
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
Greek writer
My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Greek writer
Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Greek writer
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
Greek writer
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
Greek writer
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
Greek writer
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
Greek writer
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
Greek writer
One of man's greatest obligations is anger.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Greek writer
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
Greek writer
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