Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes

What sort of madness comes over us to make us throw ourselves on another man, when he's done nothing to us, and bite him, cut his nose off, tear his ear out, run him through the guts - and all the time, calling on the Almighty to help us! Does it mean we want the Almighty to go and cut off noses and ears and rip people up?

Madness, Brother Masseo, is the salt which prevents good sense from rotting.

- 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.

Gradually I began to understand that it does not matter very much what problem, whether big or small, is tormenting us; the only thing that matters it that we be tormented, that we find a ground for being tormented. In other words, that we exercise our minds in order to keep certainty from turning us into idiots, that we fight to open every closed door we find in front of us.

Within this arena, which grows more stable night after day, generations work and love and hope and vanish. New generations tread on the corpses of their fathers, continue the work above the abyss and struggle to tame the dread mystery. How? By cultivating a single field, by kissing a woman, by studying a stone, an animal, an idea.

Who knows, perhaps God is simply the search for God.

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

Man hurries, God does not. That is why man's works are uncertain and maimed, while God's are flawless and sure. My eyes welling with tears, I vowed never to transgress this eternal law again. Like a tree I would be blasted by wind, struck by sun and rain, and would wait with confidence; the long-desired hour of flowering and fruit would come.

Time is round, and it rolls quickly.

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.

A prophet is the one who, when everyone else despairs, hopes. And when everyone else hopes, he despairs. You'll ask me why. It's because he has mastered the Great Secret: that the Wheel turns.

You have your brush, you have your colors, you paint the paradise, then in you go.

there are three kinds of men: those who make it their aim, as they say, to live their lives, eat, drink, make love, grow rich, and famous; then come those who make it their aim not to live their own lives but to concern themselves with the lives of all men – they feel that all men are one and they try to enlighten them, to love them as much as they can and do good to them; finally there are those who aim at living the life of the entire universe – everything, men, animals, trees, stars, we are all one, we are all one substance involved in the same terrible struggle. What struggle?…Turning matter into spirit.

The Lord preserve us from sainthood

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

On the way between nothingness and God, we dance and weep.

The right path is the ascent.

A crust of lard, habit, and cowardice envelops the soul; no matter what it craves from the depths of its prison, the lard, habit, and cowardice carry out something entirely different.

Fools, art is a heavy task, more heavy than gold crowns; it's far more difficult to match firm words than armies, they're disciplined troops, unconquered, to be placed in rhythm, the mind's most mighty foe, and not disperse in air. I'd give, believe me, a whole land for one good song, for I know well that only words, that words alone, like the high mountains, have no fear of age or death.

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.

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.

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.

Take care, Friars!" he cried. "If the yearning is broken off for even an instant, the wings become chains again. Stay vigilant, fight, keep the torch of your soul burning day and night. Strike! Forge the wings! I'm going-I am in a hurry to speak to God. I'm going… These are my final words: Strike! Forge the wings!

It's all because of doing things by halves and saying things by halves, being good by halves, that the world is in the mess it's in today.

This book was not written because 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. Christ suffered pain, and since then pain has been sanctified. Temptation fought until the very last moment to lead him astray, and Temptation was defeated. Christ died on the Cross, and at that instant death was vanquished forever.

The only way to save yourself is to endeavor to save others.

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.

The dissolute and unlawful king came: Herod! I saw him with my own eyes when he called me to Jericho to heal him. I took along my secret herbs - I knew all about such lore - and went. I went, and from that day on, I have not been able to eat meat, for I saw his putrescent flesh; I have not been able to drink wine, for I saw his blood filled with worms. I have retained his stench in my nostrils for over thirty years.

It's possible to save oneself from Satan, Father Francis, but from men - never!

Freedom was my first great desire. The second, which remains hidden within me to this day, tormenting me, was the desire for sanctity. Hero together with saint: such is mankind's supreme model.

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

God, what is all this talk put out by the popes? Paradise is here, my good man. God, give me no other paradise!

With the world in the state it is today, whoever is virtuous must be so to the point of sainthood, and even beyond; whoever is a sinner must be so to the point of bestiality and even beyond. Today the middle road is no more.

The sole way to save oneself is to save others. Or to struggle to save others -even that is sufficient.

What, then is our duty? It is to carefully distinguish the historic moment in which we live and to consciously assign our small energies to a specific battlefield. The more we are in phase with the current which leads the way, the more we aid man in his difficult, uncertain, danger-fraught ascent toward salvation.

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.

Go as far as you can. Go further than you can!

Man cannot sprout wings unless he has first reached the brink of the abyss!

Is he good? Or is he bad? That's the only thing I ask nowadays. And as I grow older - I'd swear this on the last crust I eat - I feel I shan't even go on asking that! Whether a man's good or bad, I'm sorry for him, for all of 'em. The sight of a man just rends my insides, even if I act as though I don't care a damn! There he is, poor devil, I think, he also eats and drinks and makes love and is frightened, whoever he is: he has his God and his devil just the same, and he'll peg out and lie as stiff as a board beneath the ground and be food for worms, just the same. Poor devil! We're all brothers! All worm-meat!

At such times [drunk] all the doors of a woman's being are opened. The sentinels relax and a kind word is as powerful as gold or love.

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.

Parthenon looked to me like an even number two or four. And even numbers are against my heart
I don't want to have anything with them. They stand too fast on their legs, they're well-ordered, they don't wish to be moved, they're conservative, satisfied. All problems solved, all desires fulfilled, they can be calm. Odd numbers, they have a rhythm familiar to my heart. The life of the odd numbers is not comfortably arranged. They don't like the world as it is, they wish to change it, improve it, push it forward. They stand on one leg, and they have the other one raised, prepared to go on. They are leaving. Where? To the next even number, where they stop for a while, breathe in, and go on marching again.

You, too, have a devil inside you but you still don't know his name and because you don't know his name, you suffocate. Baptize him, Boss, and you'll find relief.

When I close my eyes to see, to hear, to smell, to touch a country I have known, I feel my body shake and fill with joy as if a beloved person had come near me.

A rabbi was once asked the following question: 'When you say that the Jews should return to Palestine, you mean, surely, the heavenly, the immaterial, the spiritual Palestine, our true homeland?' The rabbi jabbed his staff into the ground in wrath and shouted, 'No! I want the Palestine down here, the one you can touch with your hands, with its stones, its thorns and its mud!'

Neither am I nourished by fleshless, abstract memories. If I expected my mind to distill from a turbid host of bodily joys and bitternesses an immaterial, crystal-clear thought, I would die of hunger. When I close my eyes in order to enjoy a country again, my five senses, the five mouth-filled tentacles of my body, pounce upon it and bring it to me. Colors, fruits, women. The smells of orchards, of filthy narrow alleys, of armpits. Endless snows with blue, glittering reflections. Scorching, wavy deserts of sand shimmering under the hot sun. Tears, cries, songs, distant bells of mules, camels or troikas. The acrid, nauseating stench of some Mongolian cities will never leave my nostrils. And I will eternally hold in my hands – eternally, that is, until my hands rot – the melons of Bukhara, the watermelons of the Volga, the cool, dainty hand of a Japanese girl…

For a time, in my early youth, I struggled to nourish my

When shall I at last retire into solitude alone, without companions, without joy and without sorrow, with only the sacred certainty that all is a dream? When, in my rags - without desires - shall I retire contented into the mountains? When, seeing that my body is merely sickness and crime, age and death, shall I - free, fearless, and blissful - retire to the forest? When? When, oh when?

I was ill before I fell ill.

We are to blame if reality does not take the form we desire. Whatever we have not desired with sufficient strength, that we call nonexistent. Desire it, imbrue it with your blood, your sweat, your tears, and it will take on a body. Reality is nothing more than the chimera subjected to our desire and our suffering.

Discipline is the highest of all virtues. Only so may strength and desire be counterbalanced and the endeavors of man bear fruit.

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

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

Let people be, boss; don't open their eyes. And supposing you did, what'd they see? Their misery! Leave their eyes closed, boss, and let them go on dreaming!

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.

There is only one essence, always the same. As yet, man has found no other means to elevate himself - none but the routing of matter and the submission of the individual to an end which transcends the individual, even though that end be chimerical. When the heart believes and loves, nothing chimerical exists; nothing exists but

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.

As long as there are flowers and children and birds in the world, have no fears: everything will be fine.

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!

Good Lord, how can the rich bear to die?

If a woman sleeps alone it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart, but there is one sin He will not forgive. If a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.

No, you're not free," he said. "The string you're tied to is perhaps no longer than other people's. That's all. You're on a long piece of string, boss; you come and go, and think you're free, but you never cut the string in two. And when people don't cut that string . . ."
"I'll cut it some day!" I said defiantly, because Zorba's words had touched an open wound in me and hurt.
"It's difficult, boss, very difficult. You need a touch of folly to do that; folly, d'you see? You have to risk everything! But you've got such a strong head, it'll always get the better of you. A man's head is like a grocer; it keeps accounts: I've paid so much and earned so much and that means a profit of this much or a loss of that much! The head's a careful little shopkeeper; it never risks all it has, always keeps something in reserve. It never breaks the string. Ah no! It hangs on tight to it, the bastard! If the string slips out of its grasp, the head, poor devil, is lost, finished! But if a man doesn't break the string, tell me, what flavor is left in life? The flavor of camomile, weak camomile tea! Nothing like rum-that makes you see life inside out!

Reach what you cannot

I tried to establish order over the chaos of my imagination, but this essence, the same that presented itself to me still hazily when I was a child, has always struck me as the very heart of truth. It is our duty to set ourselves an end beyond our individual concerns, beyond our convenient, agreeable habits, higher than our own selves, and disdaining laughter, hunger, even death, to toil night and day to attain that end. No, not to attain it. The self-respecting soul, as soon as he reaches his goal, places it still further away. Not to attain it, but never to halt in the ascent. Only thus does life acquire nobility and oneness.

God changes appearances every second. Blessed is the man who can recognize him in all his disguises. One moment he is a glass of fresh water, the next, your son bouncing on your knees or an enchanting woman, or perhaps merely a morning walk.

Never in my life have I feared death as much as I feared that resurrection.

I knew that over and above the truth, there exists another duty which is much more important and much more human.

Zorba sees everything everyday as if for the first time.

I pity the village where no one is a saint, but I also pity the village where everyone is a saint!

Oh, how crafty of religion, I cried out indignantly, to transplant rewards and punishments into a future life in order to comfort cowards and the enslaved and aggrieved, enabling them to bow their necks patiently before their masters, and to endure this earthly life without groaning (the only life of which we can be sure)!

I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.

My principal anguish, and the wellspring of all my joys and sorrows, has been the incessant merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh.

As you walk, you cut open and create that riverbed into which the stream of your descendants shall enter and flow.

Three kinds of souls, three prayers: 1) I am a bow in your hands, Lord. Draw me, lest I rot. 2) Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break. 3) Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break.

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.

Sea, autumnal sweetness, islands bathed in light, diaphanous cloak of delicate rainfall clothing Greece's eternal bareness. "Happy the person," I thought, "who is deemed worthy, before dying, to sail the Aegean." This world offers many pleasures: women, fruit, ideas. But I think no pleasure exists that plunges a person's heart into Paradise more than the joy of cutting across this sea on a gentle autumn day, murmuring the name of each island. Nowhere else are you transported from truth to dream with such serenity and ease. Boundaries fade; the mast of even the most dilapidated ship sprouts buds and grapes. Here in Greece, truly, necessity blossoms most certainly into miracle.

Kazantzakis, Nikos. Zorba the Greek (p. 23). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

I know now: I do not hope for anything. I do not fear anything, I have freed myself from both the mind and the heart, I have mounted much higher, I am free .

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.

I felt this was my duty ... to draw the thick ancestral darkness out of my loins and transform it ... into light.

Whoever is rich, and is a communist, is an idiot," he would say. " Whoever is poor, and is not a communist, is a bigger idiot.

Look, one day I had gone to a little village. An old grandfather of ninety was busy planting an almond tree. 'What, grandfather!' I exclaimed. 'Planting an almond tree?' And he, bent as he was, turned around and said: '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.'

Which of us was right, boss?

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!

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

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

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?

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.

If some priest or other comes to take my confession and give me sacrament, tell him to clear out, quick, and leave me his curse instead! I´ve done heaps and heaps of things in my life, but I still did not do enough. Men like me ought to live a thousand years.

But at times I was seized with compassion. A Buddhist compassion, as cold as the conclusion of a metaphysical syllogism. A compassion not only for men but for all life which struggles, cries, weeps, hopes and does not perceive that everything is a phantasmagoria of nothingness.

Monarch of earth, I shall confess my secret craft: I've always fought to purify wild flame to light, and kindle whatever light I found to burst in flame.

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.

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.

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

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.

... Man's heart is a ditch full of blood. The loved ones who have died throw themselves down on the bank of this ditch to drink the blood and so come to life again; the dearer they are to you, the more of your blood they drink. - The Narrator.

There, in the desert, there's hunger, thirst, prostrations - and God. Here there's food, wine, women - and God. Everywhere God. So, why go look for him in the desert?

Beauty always had a purpose: to be of service to life.

As I watched the seagulls, I thought, That's the road to take; find the absolute rhythm and follow it with absolute trust.

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

The ultimate, most holy form of theory is action.

All roads lead to the earth; the abyss leads to God. Jump!

To cleave that sea [the Aegean] 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.

God sends rain, but He also sends hoods; and when the rain grows heavier, He sends a cave.

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