Nikos Kazantzakis quotes - page 4

"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. (Nikos Kazantzakis)
The rosy mountain peaks laughed like high lustrous thoughts, and Helen, speechless, raised her pale hands toward the sun and joyed to feel its warm rays falling on her frozen palms. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
If I were fire, I would burn; if I were a woodcutter, I would strike. But I am a heart, and I love. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
Life is a crusade in the service of God. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
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. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
This is the moment of greatest crisis. This is the signal for the March to begin. If you do not hear this Cry tearing at your entrails, do not set out. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
Fire is the first and final mask of my God. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
Gather together in your heart all terrors, recompose all details. Salvation is a circle; close it! View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
I am not the light, I am the night; but a flame stabs through my entrails and consumes me. I am the night devoured by light. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
It is not God who will save us - it is we who will save God, by battling, by creating, and by transmuting matter into spirit. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
This ultimate stage of our spiritual exercise is called Silence. (Nikos Kazantzakis)
How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea.... All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
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. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
I should learn to run, to wrestle, to swim, to ride horses, to row, to drive a car, to fire a rifle. I should fill my soul with flesh. I should fill my flesh with soul. In fact, I should reconcile at last within me the two internal antagonists. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
Once, I saw a bee drown in honey, and I understood. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
There is only one sin god will not forgive Boss, and that is to deny a woman who is in wanting ~ Zorba. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
We do not only free God by battling and subduing the visible world about us; we also create God. "Open your eyes," God shouts; "I want to see! Prick up your ears, I want to hear! March in the front ranks: you are my head!" View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
How can anyone see the only way the world can be saved and not be forced to weep? View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
Profound and incommensurable is the worth of this flowing world: God clings to it and ascends, God feeds upon it and increases. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
How difficult, how extremely difficult for the soul to sever itself from its body the world: from mountains, seas, cities, people. The soul is an octopus and these are its tentacles. ... No force anywhere on earth is as imperialistic as the human soul. It occupies and is occupied in turn, but it always considers its empire too narrow. Suffocating, it desires to conquer the world in order to breathe freely. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
My God and I are horsemen galloping in the burning sun or under drizzling rain. Pale, starving, but unsubdued, we ride and converse. "Leader!" I cry. He turns his face toward me, and I shudder to confront his anguish. Our love for each other is rough and ready, we sit at the same table, we drink the same wine in this low tavern of life. (Nikos Kazantzakis)
Who holds a sword is tempted, who has youth must play, he who does not fear death on earth does not fear God. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
If you love me, be patient. Look at the trees. Are they in a hurry to ripen their fruit? View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
Speak straight and clear! I only hear that manly prayer which like a huge fist breaks my head against the stones. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
Her green eyes fluttered swiftly twice or thrice, then glazed, her mouth gaped open, bleating, then her jaws hung loose and retched up all her soul in lumps of clotting blood. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis