Nikos Kazantzakis Quotations

In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.

Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.

The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.

All my life I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point, until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console mankind.

A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.

I said to the almond tree, 'Friend, speak to me of God,' and the almond tree blossomed.

Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive.

I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.

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

Everything in this world has a hidden meaning.

Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.

The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry.

I expect nothing. I fear no one. I am free.

I said to the almond tree, ''Friend, speak to me of God,'' and the almond tree blossomed.

By believing passionately in something that does not yet exist, we create it.

What is love? It is not simply compassion, not simply kindness. In compassion there are two: the one who suffers and the one who feels compassion. In kindness there are two: the one who gives and the one who receives. But in love there is only one; the two join, unite, become inseparable. The I and the you vanish. To love means to lose oneself in the beloved.

You have your brush, you have your colors, you paint the paradise, then in you go.

The only thing I know is this: I am full of wounds and still standing on my feet.

My soul comes from better worlds and I have an incurable homesickness of the stars.

The landscape affects the human psyche - the soul, the body and the innermost contemplations - like music. Every time you feel nature deeper you resonate better with her, finding new elements of balance and freedom...

True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their own.

I was happy, I knew that. While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realize - sometimes with astonishment - how happy we had been.

I collect my tools: sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, intellect. Night has fallen...

No! No! Never acknowledge the limitations of man. Smash all boundaries! Deny whatever your eyes see. Die every moment, but say: Death does not exist.'

Go as far as you can. Go further than you can!

Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and *look* for trouble.

I am a weak, ephemeral creature made of mud and dream. But I feel all the powers of the universe whirling within me.

The only way to save yourself is to endeavor to save others.

Truly, everything in this world depended on time. Time ripened all. If you had time, you succeeded in working the human mud internally and turning it into spirit. Then you did not fear death. If you did not have time, you perished.

God changes appearances every second. Blessed is the man who can recognize him in all his disguises. One moment he is a glass of fresh water, the next, your son bouncing on your knees or an enchanting woman, or perhaps merely a morning walk.

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.

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

As long as there are flowers and children and birds in the world, have no fears: everything will be fine.

Be sure to live up to your reputation for honesty and goodness, because many souls who believe you to be honest and good have placed themselves in your hands.

As you walk, you cut open and create that riverbed into which the stream of your descendants shall enter and flow.

What is truth? What is falsehood? Whatever gives wings to men, whatever produces great works and great souls and lifts up a man's height above the earth - that's true. Whatever clips off man's wings - that's false.

When everyone drowns and I'm the only one to escape, God is protecting me. When everyone else is saved and I'm the only one to drown, God is protecting me then too.

As long as our souls remain strong, that is all that matters; as long as they don't decline. Because with the fall of certain souls in this world, the world itself will collapse. These are the pillars which support it. They are few, but enough.

You can knock on a deaf man's door forever.

What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams.

Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality," says one of my favorite Byzantine mystics. I did this when a child; I do it now as well in the most creative moments of my life.

This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right and to realize of a sudden that in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale.

As I watched the seagulls, I thought, That's the road to take; find the absolute rhythm and follow it with absolute trust.

All those who actually live the mysteries of life haven't the time to write, and all those who have the time don't live them! D'you see?

It doesn't matter whether or not you have a head, you must wear the right sort of hat

Happy is the man, I thought, who, before dying, has the good fortune to sail the Aegean sea.

Beauty always had a purpose: to be of service to life.

There is no harsher means of punishment, than to answer malice with kindness.

God changes his appearance every second. Blessed is the man who can recognize him in all his disguises.

The truth is that we all are one, that all of us together create god, that god is not man's ancestor, but his descendant.

The canary is like a man's soul. It sees bars around it, but instead of despairing, it sings.

I felt this was my duty ... to draw the thick ancestral darkness out of my loins and transform it ... into light.

Three kinds of souls, three prayers: 1) I am a bow in your hands, Lord. Draw me, lest I rot. 2) Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break. 3) Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break.

The more devils we have within us, the more chance we have to form angels.

Each man must have his own special route to lead him to God.

Reach what you cannot

When I encounter a sunrise, a painting, a woman, or an idea that makes my heart bound like a young calf, then I know I am standing in front of happiness.

the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!

The sole way to save oneself is to save others. Or to struggle to save others -even that is sufficient.

Every obstacle in his journey became a milestone, an occasion for further triumph. We have a model in front of us now, a model who blazes our trail and gives us strength.

I possess no weapon but love. With that I have come to do battle. Help me!

Only after I've seen the visible can I imagine what the invisible is.

Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery? To sacrifice oneself to an idea, to a race, to God? Or does it mean that the higher the model the longer the longer the tether of our slavery?

Let your youth have free reign, it won't come again, so be bold and no repenting.

If a woman sleeps alone it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart, but there is one sin He will not forgive. If a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.

The masses do not see the Sirens. They do not hear songs in the air. Blind, deaf, stooping, they pull at their oars in the hold of the earth. But the more select, the captains, harken to a Siren within them...and royally squander their lives with her.

Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all … is not to have one.

I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.

Ah, if you could dance all that you've just said, then I'd understand.

There is only one sin god will not forgive Boss, and that is to deny a woman who is in wanting ~ Zorba

Man is able, and has the duty, to reach the furthest point on the road he has chosen. Only by means of hope can we attain what is beyond hope.

God sends rain, but He also sends hoods; and when the rain grows heavier, He sends a cave.

It was certainly not this mummified and outrageously painted old woman he was seeing before him, but the entire "female species," as it was his custom to call women. The individual disappeared, the features were obliterated, whether young or senile, beautiful or ugly - those were mere unimportant variations. Behind each woman rises the austere, sacred and mysterious face of Aphrodite.

All my life one of my greatest desires has been to travel-to see and touch unknown countries, to swim in unknown seas, to circle the globe, observing new lands, seas, people, and ideas with insatiable appetite, to see everything for the first time and for the last time, casting a slow, prolonged glance, then to close my eyes and feel the riches deposit themselves inside me calmly or stormily according to their pleasure, until time passes them at last through its fine sieve, straining the quintessence out of all the joys and sorrows.

By believing passionately in that which doesn't exist, you create it and that which has not been sufficiently desired is what we call the non existent.

My principle anguish and the source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh.

I said to the almond tree, 'Sister, speak to me of God.' And the almond tree blossomed.

The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical.

What first truly stirred my soul was not fear or pain, nor was it pleasure or games; it was the yearning for freedom. I had to gain freedom-but from what, from whom? Little by little, in the course of time, I mounted freedom's rough unaccommodating ascent. To gain freedom first of all from the Turk, that was the initial step; after that, later, this new struggle began: to gain freedom from the inner Turk-from ignorance, malice and envy, from fear and laziness, from dazzling false ideas; and finally from idols, all of them, even the most revered and beloved.

All the political, social, and economic improvements, all the technical progress cannot have any regenerating significance, so long as our inner life remains as it is at present. The more the intelligence unveils and violates the secrets of Nature, the more the danger increases and the heart shrinks.

For I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm.

Everything in the world has a hidden meaning. . . . Men, animals, trees, stars, they are all hieroglyphics. When you see them you do not understand them. You think they are really men, animals, trees, stars. It is only years later that you understand.

Throughout my life my greatest benefactors have been my travels and my dreams. Very few men, living or dead, have helped me in my struggles.

We're going to start with small, easy things; then, little by little we shall try our hand at the big things. And after that, after we finish the big things, we shall undertake the impossible.

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

Never in my life have I feared death as much as I feared that resurrection.

Man hurries, God does not. That is why man's works are uncertain and maimed, while God's are flawless and sure. My eyes welling with tears, I vowed never to transgress this eternal law again. Like a tree I would be blasted by wind, struck by sun and rain, and would wait with confidence; the long-desired hour of flowering and fruit would come.

A woman's body is a dark and monstrous mystery; between her supple thighs a heavy whirlpool swirls, two rivers crash, and woe to him who slips and falls!

The dual substance of Christ- the yearning, so human, so superhuman, of man to attain God... has always been a deep inscrutable mystery to me. My principle anguish and source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh... and my soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met.

Today, any action anywhere on earth has an immediate repercussion on all five continents. News of a victory of the Eastern armies in Morocco or Shanghai travels instantly, thanks to modern means of communication, to all Eastern peoples and fills them with enthusiasm and faith. This phenomenon is, of course, unprecedented in the history of man.

He who is invisible sees more clearly, hears more clearly, and is better able to read the thoughts of men.

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.

Look, one day I had gone to a little village. An old grandfather of ninety was busy planting an almond tree. ‘What, grandfather!’ I exclaimed. ‘Planting an almond tree?’ And he, bent as he was, turned around and said: ‘My son, I carry on as if I should never die.’ I replied: ‘And I carry on as if I was going to die any minute.’ Which of us was right, boss?

I loved my body and did not want it to perish; I loved my soul and did not want it to decay. I have fought to reconcile these two primordial forces.

God, what is all this talk put out by the popes? Paradise is here, my good man. God, give me no other paradise!

The ultimate, most holy form of theory is action.

I said only one word, brought only one message: Love. Love - nothing else.

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?

Life's true face is the skull.