“Contend with the powers of nature, force them to the yoke of superior purpose. Free that spirit which struggles within them and longs to mingle with that spirit which struggles within you.”Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of GodThe Saviors of God (1923)
“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 GodThe 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 ChristThe Last Temptation of Christ (1951)
“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 GodThe Saviors of God (1923)
“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 GodThe Saviors of God (1923)