Nikos Kazantzakis
The more devils we have within us, the more chance we have to form angels.Collection: Angel
There is no harsher means of punishment, than to answer malice with kindness.Collection: Kindness
You can knock on a deaf man's door forever.Collection: Men
I said to the almond tree, 'Sister, speak to me of God.' And the almond tree blossomed.Collection: Faith
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.Collection: Men
We have our brush and colors - paint Paradise and in we go.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Country
I am a weak, ephemeral creature made of mud and dream. But I feel all the powers of the universe whirling within me.Collection: Dream
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!Collection: Knowledge
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.Collection: Hands
I was ill before I fell ill.Collection: Ill
With the world in the state it is today, whoever is virtuous must be so to the point of sainthood, and even beyond; whoever is a sinner must be so to the point of bestiality and even beyond. Today the middle road is no more.Collection: Sainthood
Monarch of earth, I shall confess my secret craft: I've always fought to purify wild flame to light, and kindle whatever light I found to burst in flame.Collection: Light
I hate all virtues based on food and bloated bellies; though food and drink are good, I'm better slaked and fed by that inhuman flame which burns in our black bowels. I like to name that flame which burns within me God!Collection: Hate
Alas for him who seeks salvation in good only! Balanced on God's strong shoulders, Good and Evil flap together like two mighty wings and lift him high.Collection: Strong
Lions and Lambs, love and force, light and fire, good and evil: all things climb the same mountain, the mountain of God.Collection: Fire
so few in reality are the true necessities of manCollection: Reality
The major and almost only theme of all my work is the struggle of man with "God": the unyielding, inextinguishable struggle of the naked worm called "man" against the terrifying power and darkness of the forces within him and around him.Collection: Struggle
Good Lord, how can the rich bear to die?Collection: Bears
Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break.Collection: Who Cares
There's a devil inside me which cries, "You're not the son of the Carpenter, you're the son of King David! You are not a man, you are the Son of man whom Daniel prophesied." And still more: "The Son of God! And still more: God!Collection: Kings
I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free. inscription on Kazantakis's tomb in Heraklion, GreeceCollection: Hope
Inexperience loves to preach.Collection: Inexperience
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.Collection: Pain
What, then is our duty? It is to carefully distinguish the historic moment in which we live and to consciously assign our small energies to a specific battlefield. The more we are in phase with the current which leads the way, the more we aid man in his difficult, uncertain, danger-fraught ascent toward salvation.Collection: Life
How could I, who loved life so intensely, have let myself be entangled for so long in that balderdash of books and paper blackened with ink!Collection: Book
May he be cursed on earth who gives his trust to virtue, that bankrupt crone who takes our life's pure gold and gives but bad receipts for payment in the lower world. Ah, passers-by that stroll, travelers that come and go, all that I had, I placed on virtue, and lost the game!Collection: Games
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?Collection: Dream
A magical portal opened inside my mind and conducted me into an astonishing world. [...] Before this moment I had divined but had never known with such positiveness that the world is extremely large and that suffering and toil are the companions and fellow warriors not only of Cretan, but of every man. [...] That by means of poetry all this suffering and effort could be transformed into dream; no matter how much of the ephemeral existed, poetry could immortalize it by turning it into song.Collection: Dream
Happy the youth who believes that his duty is to remake the world and bring it more in accord with virtue and justice, more in accord with his own heart. Woe to whoever commences his life without lunacy.Collection: Believe
Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards.Collection: Men
To think things out properly and fairly, a fellow's got to be calm and old and toothless: When you're an old gaffer with no teeth, it's easy to say: 'Damn it, boys, you mustn't bite!' But, when you've got all thirty-two teeth.Collection: Boys
All roads lead to the earth; the abyss leads to God. Jump!Collection: Earth
Before me is the abyss. How can I leap across it? And if I do not leap, how shall I ever be able to reach God?Collection: Able
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.Collection: Running
Two equally steep and bold paths may lead to the same peak. To act as if death did not exist, or to act thinking every minute of death, is perhaps the same thing.Collection: Thinking
I say one thing, you write another, and those who read you understand still something else! I say: cross, death, kingdom of heaven, God...and what do you understand? Each of you attaches his own suffering, interests and desires to each of these sacred words, and my words disappear, my soul is lost. I can't stand it any longer!Collection: Writing
No wide road leads to God.Collection: Wide
Yes, there is weeping, even in heaven, but it is for those who are still crawling on the earth.Collection: Heaven
You gave me your curse, holy Fathers. I give you a blessing: May you be as moral and religious as I am.Collection: Religious
Each man must have his own special route to lead him to God.Collection: Men
Cursed be all those on land and sea who eat their fill, cursed be all those who starve yet raise no hand in protest, cursed be all the bread, the wine, the meat which day by day descends deep in the entrails of the exploited man and turns not into freedom's cry, the murderer's ruthless knife!Collection: Wine
Within this arena, which grows more stable night after day, generations work and love and hope and vanish. New generations tread on the corpses of their fathers, continue the work above the abyss and struggle to tame the dread mystery. How? By cultivating a single field, by kissing a woman, by studying a stone, an animal, an idea.Collection: Father
Every village has its simpleton, and if one does not exist they invent one to pass the time.Collection: Time
The ultimate, most holy form of theory is action.Collection: Hard Work
I know now: I do not hope for anything. I do not fear anything, I have freed myself from both the mind and the heart, I have mounted much higher, I am free .Collection: Heart
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?Collection: Son