Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes
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It doesn't matter whether or not you have a head, you must wear the right sort of hat
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You have your brush, you have your colors, you paint the paradise, then in you go.
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My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry.
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Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all … is not to have one.
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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.
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You will, Judas, my brother. God will give you the strength, as much as you lack, because it is necessary—it is necessary for me to be killed and for you to betray me. We two must save the world. Help me." Judas bowed his head. After a moment he asked, "If you had to betray your master, would you do it?" Jesus reflected for a long time. Finally he said, "No, I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to. That is why God pitied me and gave me the easier task: to be crucified.
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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.
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This book was not written because I wanted to offer a supreme model to the man who struggles; I wanted to show him that he must not fear pain, temptation or death - because all three can be conquered, all three have already been conquered. Christ suffered pain, and since then pain has been sanctified. Temptation fought until the very last moment to lead him astray, and Temptation was defeated. Christ died on the Cross, and at that instant death was vanquished forever.
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Lions and Lambs, love and force, light and fire, good and evil: all things climb the same mountain, the mountain of God.
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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.
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No wide road leads to God.
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Discipline is the highest of all virtues. Only so may strength and desire be counterbalanced and the endeavors of man bear fruit.
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The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.
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Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.
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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.
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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.
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My soul comes from better worlds and I have an incurable homesickness of the stars.
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Good Lord, how can the rich bear to die?
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I collect my tools: sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, intellect. Night has fallen.
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I heard the bells from the future churches, the children playing and laughing in the schoolyards [...] and here was an almond tree in bloom before me: I must reach out and cut a flowering branch. For, by believing passionately in something which still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired, whatever we have not irrigated with our blood to such a degree that it becomes strong enough to stride across the somber threshold of nonexistence.
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You can knock on a deaf man's door forever.
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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.
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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.
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I was ill before I fell ill.
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We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this circle God. We might have given it any other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence.
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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!
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Once more there sounded within me the terrible warning that there is only one life for all men, 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.
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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.
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To succeed, you must first believe you can.
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I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free. inscription on Kazantakis's tomb in Heraklion, Greece
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