Quotes by Nikos Kazantzakis

Because what God wants, that, and only that, is also what we want—but we dont know it. God comes and awakens our souls, revealing to them their real, though unknown, desire. This is the secret, Brother Leo. To do the will of God means to do my own most deeply hidden will.

Leave nothing for death but a burned-out castle

The unfailing rhythm of the seasons, the ever-turning wheel of life, the four facets of the earth which are lit in turn by the sun, the passing of life--all these filled me once more with a feeling of oppression. Once more there sounded within me, together with the cranes cry, the terrible warning that there is only one life for all men, that there is no other, and that all that can be enjoyed must be enjoyed here. In eternity no other chance will be given to us.A mind hearing this pitiless warning--a warning which, at the same time, is so compassionate--would decide to conquer its weakness and meanness, its laziness and vain hopes and cling with all its power to every second which flies away forever.Great examples come to your mind and you see clearly that you are a lost soul, your life is being frittered away on petty pleasures and pains and trifling talk. Shame! Shame! you cry, and bite your lips.

But how can anyone put a bridle on mans vanity and arrogance? But how can Purity walk the earth without covering her feet with mud?

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.

Thy designs are a bottomless pit. How can I descend into this pit to examine it? Thou lookest thousands of years into the future and then Thou judgest. What today seems an injustice to mans minute brain becomes, thousands of years hence, the mother of mans salvation. If what today we term injustice did not exist, perhaps true justice would never come to mankind.

Oh, how crafty of religion, I cried out indignantly, to transplant rewards and punishments into a future life in order to comfort cowards and the enslaved and aggrieved, enabling them to bow their necks patiently before their masters, and to endure this earthly life without groaning (the only life of which we can be sure)!

I did not know what I was going to do with my life; before anything else I wanted to find an answer, my answer, to the timeless questions, and then after that I would decide what I would become. If I did not begin by discovering what was the grand purpose of life on earth, I said to myself, how would I be able to discover the purpose of my tiny ephemeral life? And if I did not give my life a purpose, how would I be able to engage in action? I was not interested in finding what lifes purpose was objectively - this, I divined, was impossible and futile - but simply what purpose I, of my own free will, could give it in accord with my spiritual and intellectual needs. Whether or not this purpose was the true one did not, at that time, have any great significance for me. The important thing was that I should find (should create) a purpose congruent with my own self, and thus, by following it, reel out my particular desires and abilities to the furthest possible limit. For then at last I would be collaborating harmoniously with the totality of the universe.

Its possible to save oneself from Satan, Father Francis, but from men—never!

Every perfect traveller always creates the country where he travels.

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

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

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

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

A weak soul does not have the endurance to resist the flesh for very long. It grows heavy, becomes flesh itself, and the contest ends. But among responsible men, men who keep their eyes riveted day and night upon the Supreme Duty, the conflict between flesh and spirit breaks out mercilessly and may last until death.

Happiness is a simple everyday miracle, like water, and we are not aware of it.

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 realise - sometimes with astonishment - how happy we had been.

Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and Ill tell you who you are. Some turn their food into fat and manure, some into work and good humour, and others, Im told, into God. So there must be three sorts of men.

I felt deep within me that 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!

When everything goes wrong, what a joy to test your soul and see if it has endurance and courage. An invisible and all-powerful enemy - some call him God, others the Devil, seem to rush upon us to destroy us; but we are not destroyed.