Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes

If some priest or other comes to take my confession and give me sacrament, tell him to clear out, quick, and leave me his curse instead! I´ve done heaps and heaps of things in my life, but I still did not do enough. Men like me ought to live a thousand years.

I will not accept boundaries; appearances cannot contain me; I choke! To bleed in this agony, and to live it profoundly, is the second duty.
The mind is patient and adjusts itself, it likes to play; but the heart grows savage and will not condescend to play; it stifles and rushes to tear apart the nets of necessity.

Everything you do reverberates throughout a thousand destinies. As you walk, you cut open and create that river bed into which the stream of your descendants shall enter and flow.

وحشوت غليوني ببطء وأشعلته. لكل شيء معنى خفيٌّ في هذا العالم، هكذا قلتُ في نفسي. البشر والحيوانات والأشجار والنجوم، كلها ليست إلا خطوطاً هيروغليفية، وسعيد هو الذي يبدأ بحلهاوإدراك ما تعنيه، ولكن....يا لتعاسته أيضاً! إنه لا يفهمها عندما يراها. فهو يعتقد أنها بشر وحيوانات وأشجار ونجوم ثم يكتشف بعد عدة سنوات، بعد فوات الأوان، معناها الحقيقي. ،

Life's true face is the skull.

Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery? To sacrifice oneself to an idea, to a race, to God? Or does it mean that the higher the model the longer the tether of our slavery? Then we can enjoy ourselves and frolic in a more spacious arena and die without having come to the end of the tether. Is that, then, what we call liberty?

Crocodiles sweetly shut their lidded eyes, and yawned,
for the blond meat had been quite good, and in slow rains
new flesh would sprout once more and then be munched anew.

As I watched the seagulls, I thought: "That's the road to take; find the absolute rhythm and follow it with absolute trust."

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.

إن الإله الرحيم كمل ترى ، لا تستطيع طبقات السماء السبع وطبقات الأرض السبع أن تسعه .
لكن قلب الإنسان يسعه . إذن احذر يا ألكسيس ، من أن تجرح ذات يوم قلب الإنسان

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

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!

إنّ الحسابات الطيبة تخلق الأصدقاء الطيبين

أنا مخلوق مؤقت و ضعيف، مصنوع من طين و أحلام لكني أدرك أن في داخلي تصطخب كل قوى الكون

Let your youth have free reign, it won't come again, so be bold and no repenting.