“I do not care what face other ages and other people have given to the enormous, faceless essence.”

The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: I do not care what face other ages and other people have given to the enormous, faceless essence. They have crammed it with human virtues, with rewards and punishments, with certain ties. They have given a face to their hopes and fears, they have submitted their anarchy to a rhythm, they have found a higher justification by which to live and labor. They have fulfilled their duty.
But today we have gone beyond these needs; we have shattered this particular mask of the Abyss; our God no longer fits under the old features.
Our hearts have overbrimmed with new agonies, with new luster and silence. The mystery has grown savage, and God has grown greater. The dark powers ascend, for they have also grown greater, and the entire human island quakes.
Let us stoop down to our hearts and confront the Abyss valiantly. Let us try to mold once more, with our flesh and blood, the new, contemporary face of God.
For our God is not an abstract thought, a logical necessity, a high and harmonious structure made of deductions and speculations.
He is not an immaculate, neutral, odorless, distilled product of our brains, neither male nor female.
He is both man and woman, mortal and immortal, dung and spirit. He gives birth, fecundates, slaughters — death and eros in one — and then he begets and slays once more, dancing spaciously beyond the boundaries of a logic which cannot contain the antinomies.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I do not care what face other ages and other people have given to the enormous, faceless essence." by Nikos Kazantzakis?
Nikos Kazantzakis photo
Nikos Kazantzakis 222
Greek writer 1883–1957

Related quotes

Jerome K. Jerome photo
Aristotle photo

“What is the essence of life? To serve others and to do good.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Often given as a saying of Aristotle with no reference.
Disputed

Theodore Roosevelt photo
Matthew Stover photo
Edgar Froese photo
Laozi photo

“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.”

Laozi (-604) semi-legendary Chinese figure, attributed to the 6th century, regarded as the author of the Tao Te Ching and fou…
Jeff Buckley photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“It's hard to explain. I don't care about anything having to do with anything having to do with anything other than the country.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, November, New York Times Interview (November 23, 2016)

Julie Taymor photo

“I'm a director and I paint many other people… Other people's realities. But I do have to invest in it.”

Julie Taymor (1952) American film and theatre director

On Frida Kahlo's work and her own
Bill Moyers interview (2002)
Context: She painted what she painted because she had to, because she was passionate about it. She didn't care at all if people bought her paintings. As she said, she painted her reality.
I find that I make as an artist the kind of choices that I have to be impassioned about. I'm not going to spend two years on a film or four years on an opera if I don't feel like I can put my own self into it. That doesn't mean it has to be about myself. That's a difference.
Frida painted her own reality, her life. I'm a director and I paint many other people... Other people's realities. But I do have to invest in it.

Related topics