Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes - Page 6

A slave's soul has no worth, my brothers; it lacks strength to tread on this great earth with gallantry and freedom. I pity the poor slaves, they're nought but airy mist, a light breeze scatters them, a fragrance knocks them down; it's only just they crawl on the earth on hands and knees. Today I'll write a hymn to God and pray for this great grace.

Thus night with all her snares passed through the upper world and baited all heads sweetly, fed all foolish hopes, for night can bring to men all shrewish day denies, wrapped as a gift in the green leaves of opiate dream.

I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free. inscription on Kazantakis's tomb in Heraklion, Greece

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.

I surrender myself to everything. I love, I feel pain, I struggle. The world seems to me wider than the mind, my heart a dark and almighty mystery.

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?

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.

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!

May he be cursed on earth who gives his trust to virtue, that bankrupt crone who takes our life's pure gold and gives but bad receipts for payment in the lower world. Ah, passers-by that stroll, travelers that come and go, all that I had, I placed on virtue, and lost the game!

What happiness this is: to fly, skimming over the earth just as we do in our dreams! Life has become a dream. Can this be the meaning of paradise?

There is only one woman in the world. One woman, with many faces.

A magical portal opened inside my mind and conducted me into an astonishing world. [...] Before this moment I had divined but had never known with such positiveness that the world is extremely large and that suffering and toil are the companions and fellow warriors not only of Cretan, but of every man. [...] That by means of poetry all this suffering and effort could be transformed into dream; no matter how much of the ephemeral existed, poetry could immortalize it by turning it into song.

Happy the youth who believes that his duty is to remake the world and bring it more in accord with virtue and justice, more in accord with his own heart. Woe to whoever commences his life without lunacy.

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.

To think things out properly and fairly, a fellow's got to be calm and old and toothless: When you're an old gaffer with no teeth, it's easy to say: 'Damn it, boys, you mustn't bite!' But, when you've got all thirty-two teeth.

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

I should learn to run, to wrestle, to swim, to ride horses, to row, to drive a car, to fire a rifle. I should fill my soul with flesh. I should fill my flesh with soul. In fact, I should reconcile at last within me the two internal antagonists.

Two equally steep and bold paths may lead to the same peak. To act as if death did not exist, or to act thinking every minute of death, is perhaps the same thing.

I say one thing, you write another, and those who read you understand still something else! I say: cross, death, kingdom of heaven, God...and what do you understand? Each of you attaches his own suffering, interests and desires to each of these sacred words, and my words disappear, my soul is lost. I can't stand it any longer!

Yes, there is weeping, even in heaven, but it is for those who are still crawling on the earth.

You gave me your curse, holy Fathers. I give you a blessing: May you be as moral and religious as I am.

Cursed be all those on land and sea who eat their fill, cursed be all those who starve yet raise no hand in protest, cursed be all the bread, the wine, the meat which day by day descends deep in the entrails of the exploited man and turns not into freedom's cry, the murderer's ruthless knife!

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.

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

Everything in this world has a hidden meaning.