Nikos Lygeros Quotes

Zorba sees everything everyday as if for the first time. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

O brain, be flowers that nightingales may come to sing! ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Time is round, and it rolls quickly. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

A fault confessed is half redressed. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

The Lord preserve us from sainthood ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

My soul comes from better worlds and I have an incurable homesickness of the stars. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Reach what you cannot ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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

So few in reality are the true necessities of man ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Leave nothing for death but a burned-out castle ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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

Who knows, perhaps God is simply the search for God. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all ... is not to have one. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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

Life on earth means: the sprouting of wings. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

You cannot understand how much patience I need in order not to lose my patience, so that I can withstand all this misfortune all by myself.

Nikos Kazantzakis, from a letter to Galatea Kazantzaki wr. c. June 1922 ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

The only thing I know is this: I am full of wounds and still standing on my feet. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

No wide road leads to God. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

We have but a single moment at our disposal. Let us transform that moment into eternity. No other form of immortality exists ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Our body is a ship that sails on deep blue waters. What is our goal? To be shipwrecked! ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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

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

Good Lord, how can the rich bear to die? ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Only one woman exists in this world, one woman with countless faces. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

The ultimate, most holy form of theory is action. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

The right path is the ascent. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

One of man's greatest obligations is anger. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

I'm fighting to save myself, and save myself, I will. Mary Magdalene in The Last Temptation of Christ ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

I am always filled with melancholy. It's as if I see everything black. Everything wounds me deeply. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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

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

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

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

Be always restless, unsatisfied, unconforming. Whenever a habit becomes convenient, smash it! The greatest sin of all is satisfaction. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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

We have our brush and colors - paint Paradise and in we go. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

I realized that meals, too, are a spiritual service and that meat, bread, and wine are the raw materials from which spirit is formed. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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

In this way, without understanding how, I entered sleep together with Christ's passion and the nightingales' warbling, just as the soul will enter Paradise. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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

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

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

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

You do miracles if you concentrate your mind on one thing and one thing only. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

I said to the almond tree, 'Sister, speak to me of God.' And the almond tree blossomed. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Die every day. Be reborn again every day. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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

At night the jackals came and ate their feet, and the next morning crows flew down and ate their eyes. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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

The longer I live, the more I rebel. I'm not going to give in; I want to conquer the world! ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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

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

God changes his appearance every second. Blessed is the man who can recognize him in all his disguises. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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

When I encounter a sunrise, a painting, a woman, or an idea that makes my heart bound like a young calf, then I know I am standing in front of happiness. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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

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

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

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

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! ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Only after I've seen the visible can I imagine what the invisible is. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

For I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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

- 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

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

I was ill before I fell ill. ~ 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

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

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

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. ~ 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

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

I said only one word, brought only one message: Love. Love - nothing else. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and *look* for trouble. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

She disappeared. Since then I had never thought anymore of her. Nevertheless, she must have continued to live deep down in my heart, and today, on this empty coast, she reappeared, pale and plaintive, from the depths of my being. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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

Time is not a field, to be measured in rods, nor a sea, to be measured in miles; it is a heart beat. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Go as far as you can. Go further than you can! ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Life's true face is the skull. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Lions and Lambs, love and force, light and fire, good and evil: all things climb the same mountain, the mountain of God. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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

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

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

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

All those who actually live the mysteries of life haven't the time to write, and all those who have the time don't live them! D'you see? ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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

The landscape affects the human psyche - the soul, the body and the innermost contemplations - like music. Every time you feel nature deeper you resonate better with her, finding new elements of balance and freedom ... ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

The Purpose gives the array of these actions coherence, not just at any given moment, but over time, and thus helps ensure that the firm does achieve a genuine specialization, a genuine difference from its competitors. In this way it makes superior profits possible. Purpose ~ Nikos Mourkogiannis

The truth is that we all are one, that all of us together create god, that god is not man's ancestor, but his descendant. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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? ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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