Nikos Kazantzakis: Trending quotes

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Nikos Kazantzakis: 444 quotes76 likes

“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 book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

“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

Book VII, line 356
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

“"Do not die that we may not die," the dead cry out within you. "We had no time to enjoy the women we desired; be in time, sleep with them! We had no time to turn our thoughts into deeds; turn them into deeds! We had no time to grasp and to crystallize the face of our hope; make it firm!" …
But you must choose with care whom to hurl down again into the chasms of your blood, and whom you shall permit to mount once more into the light and the earth.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

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

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek (1946), Ch. 8

“BLESSED BE ALL THOSE WHO HEAR AND RUSH TO FREE YOU, LORD, AND WHO SAY: "ONLY YOU AND I EXIST."
BLESSED BE ALL THOSE WHO FREE YOU AND BECOME UNITED WITH YOU, LORD, AND WHO SAY: "YOU AND I ARE ONE."
AND THRICE BLESSED BE THOSE WHO BEAR ON THEIR SHOULDERS AND DO NOT BUCKLE UNDER THIS GREAT, SUBLIME, AND TERRIFYING SECRET:
THAT EVEN THIS ONE
DOES NOT EXIST!”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

“I wanted to offer a supreme model to the man who struggles; I wanted to show him that he must not fear pain, temptation or death — because all three can be conquered, all three have already been conquered.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Last Temptation of Christ

The Last Temptation of Christ (1951)

“I recall an endless desert of infinite and flaming matter. I am burning! I pass through immeasurable, unorganized time, completely done, despairing, crying in the wilderness.
And slowly the flame subsides, the womb of matter grows cool, the stone comes alive, breaks open, and a small green leaf uncurls into the air, trembling. It clutches the soil, steadies itself, raises its head and hands, grasps the air, the water, the light, and sucks at the Universe.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

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

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

“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 book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek (1946), Ch. 21

“Descend you weary-laden, descend in the dark earth,
help me to finish swiftly my dread master's shroud,
let each hem hold my pain, each corner hide a crow,
a lean, voracious crow to peck his heart out bit by bit.”

Nikos Kazantzakis

Slave's prayer, Book XI, line 708
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

“Amid all these things, beyond all these things every man and nation, every plant and animal, every god and demon, charges upward like an army inflamed by an incomprehensible, unconquerable Spirit.
We struggle to make this Spirit visible, to give it a face, to encase it in words, in allegories and thoughts and incantations, that it may not escape us.
But it cannot be contained in the twentysix letters of an alphabet which we string out in rows; we know that all these words, these allegories, these thoughts, and these incantations are, once more, but a new mask with which to conceal the Abyss.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

“I hold the brimming wineglass and relive the toils of my grandfathers and great-grandfathers. The sweat of my labor runs down like a fountain from my tall, intoxicated brow.
I am a sack filled with meat and bones, blood, sweat, and tears, desires and visions.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

“Crocodiles sweetly shut their lidded eyes, and yawned,
for the blond meat had been quite good, and in slow rains
new flesh would sprout once more and then be munched anew.”

Nikos Kazantzakis

Book XI, line 652
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

“With silent strides Odysseus then shot back the bolt,
passed lightly through the courtyard and sped down the street.
Some saw him take the graveyard's zigzag mountain path,
some saw him leap on rocks that edged the savage shore,
some visionaries saw him in the dead of night
swimming and talking secretly with the sea-demons,
but only a small boy saw him in a lonely dream
sit crouched and weeping by the dark sea's foaming edge.”

Nikos Kazantzakis

Book II, line 457
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

“Whoever climbed the Lord's mountain had to possess clean hands and an innocent heart; otherwise the Summit would kill him. Today the doorway is deserted. Soiled hands and sinful hearts are able to pass by without fear, for the Summit kills no longer.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Report to Greco

"The Desert. Sinai.", Ch. 21, p. 277
Report to Greco (1965)

“The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Last Temptation of Christ

Source: The Last Temptation of Christ (1951), Ch. 18

“In religions which have lost their creative spark, the gods eventually become no more than poetic motifs or ornaments for decorating human solitude and walls.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek (1946), Ch. 12

“The bodies breathe, feed, store up strength, and then in an erotic moment are shattered, are spent and drained utterly, that they may bequeath their spirit to their sons. What spirit? The drive upward!”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

“Death gestured with his hands and bade the king thrice welcome.”

Nikos Kazantzakis

Book VIII, line 168
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

“Tomorrow, go forth and stand before the Lord. A great and strong wind will blow over you and rend the mountains and break in pieces the rocks, but the Lord will not be in the wind. And after the wind and earthquake, but the Lord will not be in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord will not be in the fire. And after the fire a gentle, cooling breeze. That is where the Lord will be.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Report to Greco

This is how the spirit comes. After the gale, the earthquake, and fire: a gentle, cooling breeze. This is how it will come in our own day as well. We are passing through the period of earthquake, the fire is approaching, and eventually (when? after how many generations?) the gentle, cool breeze will blow.
"The Desert. Sinai.", Ch. 21, p. 278
Report to Greco (1965)