Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes - Page 6

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• 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.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Brother, Writing, Light

  Nikos Kazantzakis (1958). “The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel”, New York : Simon and Schuster

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• 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.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Dream, Night, Men

  Nikos Kazantzakis (1958). “the Odyssey a Modern Sequel”

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

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Hope, Fear, Inscriptions

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• 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.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Men, Warning, Chance

  Nikos Kazantzakis (1964). “Zorba the Greek”

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• 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.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Pain, Struggle, Heart

  Nikos Kazantzakis (2012). “Saviors of God”, p.38, Simon and Schuster

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• 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

  Able, Abyss, Leap

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• 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.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Life, Military, War

  Nikos Kazantzakis (2012). “Report to Greco”, p.578, Simon and Schuster

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• 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

  Book, Long, Ink

  Nikos Kazantzakis, Carl Wildman (1953). “Zorba the Greek”, p.8, Simon and Schuster

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• 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.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Sainthood, World, Today

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• 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!

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Games, Giving, Gold

  Nikos Kazantzakis (1958). “the Odyssey a Modern Sequel”

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• 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?

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Dream, Earth, Paradise

  Nikos Kazantzakis, Peter Bien (1988). “The Last Temptation of Christ”, p.458, Simon and Schuster

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• The major and almost only theme of all my work is the struggle of man with "God": the unyielding, inextinguishable struggle of the naked worm called "man" against the terrifying power and darkness of the forces within him and around him.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Struggle, Men, Darkness

  "Nikos Kazantzakis" by Helen Kazantzakis, (p. 507), 1968.

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

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  World, Faces, One Woman

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• 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.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Dream, Song, Mean

  "Report to Greco". Book by Nikos Kazantzakis, transl. by P. A. Bien, Faber and Faber Limited, "Naxos", Ch. 11, p. 96, 1973.

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• 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.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Believe, Heart, Justice

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• 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.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Men, Bird, Heaven

  Nikos Kazantzakis (2012). “Report to Greco”, p.253, Simon and Schuster

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• 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.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Boys, Thinking, Two

  Nikos Kazantzakis, Carl Wildman (1953). “Zorba the Greek”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

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

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Earth, Abyss

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• 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.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Running, Horse, Fire

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• 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.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Thinking, Two, May

  Nikos Kazantzakis, Carl Wildman (1953). “Zorba the Greek”, p.35, Simon and Schuster

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• 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!

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Writing, Heaven, Soul

  Nikos Kazantzakis, Peter Bien (1988). “The Last Temptation of Christ”, p.415, Simon and Schuster

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

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Heaven, Judgement, Earth

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

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Religious, Father, Blessing

  Nikos Kazantzakis, Peter Bien (2012). “The Selected Letters of Nikos Kazantzakis”, p.26, Princeton University Press

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• 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.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Father, Struggle, Kissing

  Nikos Kazantzakis (2012). “Saviors of God”, p.49, Simon and Schuster

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• 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!

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Wine, Men, Hands

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