My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry.
NIKOS KAZANTZAKISMy entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry.
NIKOS KAZANTZAKISAs you walk, you cut open and create that river bed into which the stream of your descendants shall enter and flow.
NIKOS KAZANTZAKISHow 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!
NIKOS KAZANTZAKISThe ultimate, most holy form of theory is action.
NIKOS KAZANTZAKISFreedom was my first great desire. The second, which remains hidden within me to this day, tormenting me, was the desire for sanctity. Hero together with saint: such is mankind’s supreme model.
NIKOS KAZANTZAKISTo succeed, you must first believe you can.
NIKOS KAZANTZAKISI 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 .
NIKOS KAZANTZAKISWhat a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams.
NIKOS KAZANTZAKISThe 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.
NIKOS KAZANTZAKISBe always restless, unsatisfied, unconforming. Whenever a habit becomes convenient, smash it! The greatest sin of all is satisfaction.
NIKOS KAZANTZAKISTo cleave that sea [the Aegean] in the gentle autumnal season, murmuring the name of each islet, is to my mind the joy most apt to transport the heart of man into paradise.
NIKOS KAZANTZAKISHappy 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.
NIKOS KAZANTZAKISBy believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
NIKOS KAZANTZAKISDiscipline is the highest of all virtues. Only so may strength and desire be counterbalanced and the endeavors of man bear fruit.
NIKOS KAZANTZAKISTrue 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.
NIKOS KAZANTZAKISLions and Lambs, love and force, light and fire, good and evil: all things climb the same mountain, the mountain of God.
NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS