Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes - Page 2

Ah, if you could dance all that you've just said, then I'd understand.

The canary is like a man's soul. It sees bars around it, but instead of despairing, it sings.

No! No! Never acknowledge the limitations of man. Smash all boundaries! Deny whatever your eyes see. Die every moment, but say: Death does not exist.'

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.

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

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

I was happy, I knew that. 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 realize - sometimes with astonishment - how happy we had been.

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

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

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.

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!

This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right and to realize of a sudden that in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale.

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

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

The ultimate, most holy form of theory is action.

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.

Everything in this world has a hidden meaning, I thought. Men, animals, trees, stars, they are all hieroglyphics; woe to anyone who begins to decipher them and guess what they mean.... When you see them, you do not understand them. You think they are really men, animals, trees, stars. It is only years later, too late, that you understand.

What is truth? What is falsehood? Whatever gives wings to men, whatever produces great works and great souls and lifts up a man's height above the earth - that's true. Whatever clips off man's wings - that's false.

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

The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical.

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

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

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

To succeed, you must first believe you can.

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.