Source: Zorba the Greek (1946), Ch. 23
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Source: Zorba the Greek (1946), Ch. 6
Context: While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it we do suddenly realize — sometimes with astonishment — how happy we had been.
“Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all … is not to have one.”
Variant: Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all, in my view, is not to have one.
Source: Zorba the Greek
“I am an improvised bridge, and when Someone passes over me, I crumble away behind Him.”
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: I am not alone in my fear, nor alone in my hope, nor alone in my shouting. A tremendous host, an onrush of the Universe fears, hopes, and shouts with me.
I am an improvised bridge, and when Someone passes over me, I crumble away behind Him.
“All the concentrated agony of the Universe bursts out in every living thing.”
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: The wife of my God is matter; they wrestle with each other, they laugh and weep, they cry out in the nuptial bed of flesh.
They spawn and are dismembered. They fill sea, land, and air with species of plants, animals, men, and spirits. This primordial pair embraces, is dismembered, and multiplies in every living creature.
All the concentrated agony of the Universe bursts out in every living thing. God is imperiled in the sweet ecstasy and bitterness of flesh.
But he shakes himself free, he leaps out of brains and loins, then clings to new brains and new loins until the struggle for liberation again breaks out from the beginning.
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: With clarity and quiet, I look upon the world and say: All that I see, hear, taste, smell, and touch are the creations of my mind.
The sun comes up and the sun goes down in my skull. Out of one of my temples the sun rises, and into the other the sun sets.
The stars shine in my brain; ideas, men, animals browse in my temporal head; songs and weeping fill the twisted shells of my ears and storm the air for a moment.
Source: The Last Temptation of Christ
"The Son", Ch. 4, p. 45
Report to Greco (1965)
“The more devils we have within us, the more chance we have to form angels.”
Source: The Last Temptation of Christ (1951), Ch. 10
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: God cries to my heart: "Save me!"
God cries to men, to animals, to plants, to matter: "Save me!"
Listen to your heart and follow him. Shatter your body and awake: We are all one.
Love man because you are he.
Love animals and plants because you were they, and now they follow you like faithful co-workers and slaves.
Love your body; only with it may you fight on this earth and turn matter into spirit.
Love matter. God clings to it tooth and nail, and fights. Fight with him.
Die every day. Be born every day. Deny everything you have every day. The superior virtue is not to be free but to fight for freedom.
Do not condescend to ask: "Shall we conquer? Shall we be conquered?" Fight on!
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: Enlighten the dark blood of your ancestors, shape their cries into speech, purify their will, widen their narrow, unmerciful brows. This is your second duty.
For you are not only a slave. As soon as you were born, a new possibility was born with you, a free heartbeat stormed through the great sunless heart of your race.
“Where are we going? Do not ask! Ascend, descend. There is no beginning and no end.”
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: Where are we going? Do not ask! Ascend, descend. There is no beginning and no end. Only this present moment exists, full of bitterness, full of sweetness, and I rejoice in it all.
“Free yourself from race also; fight to live through the whole struggle of man.”
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: It is not you talking. Nor is it your race only which shouts within you, for all the innumerable races of mankind shout and rush within you: white, yellow, black.
Free yourself from race also; fight to live through the whole struggle of man.
"Love each man according to his contribution in the struggle. Do not seek friends; seek comrades-in-arms.
The Saviors of God (1923)
“Of the two, I choose the ascending path.”
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: Which of the two eternal roads shall I choose? Suddenly I know that my whole life hangs on this decision — the life of the entire Universe.
Of the two, I choose the ascending path. Why? For no intelligible reason, without any certainty; I know how ineffectual the mind and all the small certainties of man can be in this moment of crisis.
I choose the ascending path because my heart drives me toward it. "Upward! Upward! Upward!" my heart shouts, and I follow it trustingly.
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: All this world, all this rich, endless flow of appearances is not a deception, a multicolored phantasmagoria of our mirroring mind. Nor is it absolute reality which lives and evolves freely, independent of our mind's power.
It is not the resplendent robe which arrays the mystic body of God. Nor the obscurely translucent partition between man and mystery.
All this world that we see, hear, and touch is that accessible to the human senses, a condensation of the two enormous powers of the Universe permeated with all of God.
“I am not alone in my fear, nor alone in my hope, nor alone in my shouting.”
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: I am not alone in my fear, nor alone in my hope, nor alone in my shouting. A tremendous host, an onrush of the Universe fears, hopes, and shouts with me.
I am an improvised bridge, and when Someone passes over me, I crumble away behind Him.