Zorba Quotes

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! - The Narrator. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

What's missing is the testosterone. What's missing is the fury. What's missing is the passionate convicted commitment. And I got a lot of mine from my religious background. So y'all best stop imagining the way Dr. Zorba looked, or some defenseless Hasidic Jew with a little yarmulke on his head, 'cause that ain't here for you. ~ David Lee Roth

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. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Zorba is beautiful, but something is missing. The earth is his, but the heaven is missing. He is earthly, rooted, like a giant cedar, but he has no wings. He cannot fly into the sky. He has roots but no wings. ~ Rajneesh

NMK is a well know maxillofacial surgeon, from India, pens his first poetry book Miracle Mix, favourably reviewed by literary critic Prof. M Krishnan Nair. He says "Every poem has an emotional reality. This is rarely found in modern poetry."
Almost all the poems have a curious mix of humour and pathos. This anthology captures impressions made on poet's mind by various images and objects ranging from passing clouds, flowing streams to life itself. In simple yet evocative manner, the poet introduces the readers to his world of imagination through these poems. Sometimes he becomes one with the elements of nature and at others he narrates an old legend.
Dr. Nikhil Kurien writes under the pen name NMK, he is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon.

ISBN: 978-93-85020-82-7
Publisher: Zorba Books
book available on Zorba Book Store, Flipkart, amazon, Infibeam and shop clues and on Kindle. ~ NMK

I was very much a child of the 1960s. I protested the Vietnam War and grew up in a fairly politicized home. My father was like a cross between William Kunstler and Zorba the Greek. I grew up among left-wing lawyers. ~ Marianne Williamson

When Carl asked the Brices to bring their whole family to therapy, everyone in the family knew intuitively what that meant. Their whole world would be exposed: all its caring, its history, its anger, its anxiety. All in one place at once time, subject to the scrutiny and invasion of a stranger. And that was too much vulnerability. With its own unconscious wisdom, the family elected Don to stay home and test the therapists. Did we really mean everybody? Would we weaken and capitulate if they didn't bring Don?

They had something to gain by the strategy. If we were hesitant and unconfident in our approach to their defiance, they would know that they could not trust us with the boiling cauldron of feeling which their family contained. If we were decisive and firm, they would guess that maybe we could handle the stresses which they intuitively knew had to be brought out into the open. One way or another, they had to find out how much power we had. In the meantime, they postponed facing that mysterious electricity, that critical mass, the whole family. Perhaps they thought they could be spared what Zorba called the full catastrophe. ~ Augustus Y. Napier

We are small worms, Zorba, very small worms on the tiniest leaf of a gigantic tree. This tiny leaf is our earth; the other leaves are the stars you see moving at night. We drag ourselves along on our tiny leaf, eagerly ferreting around in it. We smell it: it has an odor. We taste it: it can be eaten. We strike it: it resounds, shouting like a living thing. Some of us human beings, the most fearless, reach the edge of the leaf. We bend over this edge with open eyes and ears, observing chaos below. We shudder. We divine the terrible drop beneath us, occasionally hear a sound made by the gigantic tree's other leaves, sense the sap rising from the roots, swelling our hearts. In this way, leaning over the abyss, we realize with all our body and soul that we are being overcome by terror. What begins at that moment is - " I stopped. I had wanted to say, "What begins at that moment is poetry," but Zorba would not have understood, so I kept silent. "What begins?" asked Zorba eagerly. "Why did you stop?" "At that moment, Zorba, begins the great danger," I replied. "Some become dazed and delirious; others, growing afraid, take great pains to discover an answer that will brace their heart. These say, 'God.' Still others, calmly, bravely, look down at the drop from the leaf's edge and say, 'I like it.' ~ 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

... 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. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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

What happened to the crow, Zorba?"
"Well, you see, he used to walk respectably, properly - well, like a crow. But one day he got it into his head to try and strut about like a pigeon. And from that time the poor fellow couldn't for the life of him recall his own way of walking. He was all mixed up, don't you see? He just hobbled about. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Americans are pushy, obnoxious, neurotic, crass - anything and everything - the full catastrophe as our friend Zorba might say. Canadians are none of that. The way you might fear a cow sitting down in the middle of the street during rush hour, that's how I fear Canadians. To Canadians, everyone is equal. Joni Mitchell is interchangeable with a secretary at open-mic night. Frank Gehry is no greater than a hack pumping out McMansions on AutoCAD. John Candy is no funnier than Uncle Lou when he gets a couple of beers in him. No wonder the only Canadians anyone's ever heard of are the ones who have gotten the hell out. Anyone with talent who stayed would be flattened under an avalanche of equality. The thing Canadians don't understand is that some people are extraordinary and should be treated as such. ~ Maria Semple

Only Zorbas become Buddhas - and Buddha was never a monk, A monk is one who has never been a Zorba and has become enchanted by the words of Buddhas. A monk is an imitator, he is false, pseudo. He imitates Buddhas. He may be Christian, he may be Buddhist, he may be a Hindu - that doesn't make much difference - but he imitates Buddhas. ~ Rajneesh

Live in this world, because this world gives a ripening, maturity, integrity. The challenges of this world give you a centering, an awareness. And that awareness becomes the ladder. Then you can move from Zorba to Buddha. ~ Rajneesh

Zorba sighed. He lit a cigarette, took one or two puffs and then threw it away.
My country, you say? ... You believe all the rubbish your books tell you ... ? Well, I'm the one you should believe. So long as there are countries, man will stay like an animal, a ferocious animal ... But I am delivered from all that, God be praised! It's finished for me! What about you? ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

That is the ultimate synthesis - when Zorba becomes a Buddha. I am trying to create here not Zorba the Greek but Zorba the Buddha. ~ Rajneesh

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