Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes

عنما تتملكنا الكآبة فعلينا أنا نمنح أنفسنا وقتاً طيباً

الحقيقة لا أمل منها، الحقيقة هي اليأس، مثل الضياء المبهر يعشي البصر ولا ينير الطريق.

Luck is blind, they say. It can’t see where it’s going and keeps running into people…and the people it knocks into we call lucky! Well, to hell with luck if it's like that, I say!

إذا انسحبت منهزماً سيصير موتي عاقراً . وسيضيع مع جسدي و ستتبعثر روحي أدراج الرياح . وإذا حاربت ببسالة فسأهبط إلى أعماق الأرض كثمرة مليئة بالبذور. نفسي سيهجر جسدي وسيتركه يفسد ، ثم سيُنظّم أجساداً جديدة ويستمر في المعركة .

This is the moment of greatest crisis. This is the signal for the March to begin. If you do not hear this Cry tearing at your entrails, do not set out.

The sole way to save oneself is to save others. Or to struggle to save others -even that is sufficient.

With clarity and quiet, I look upon the world and say: All that I see, hear, taste, smell, and touch are the creations of my mind. The sun comes up and the sun goes down in my skull. Out of one of my temples the sun rises, and into the other the sun sets. The stars shine in my brain; ideas, men, animals browse in my temporal head; songs and weeping fill the twisted shells of my ears and storm the air for a moment.

بعيداً عن العقل وفي الهاوية المقدسة للقلب أتوازن مرتجفاً

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.

How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. . . . All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.

What is love? It is not simply compassion, not simply kindness. In compassion there are two: the one who suffers and the one who feels compassion. In kindness there are two: the one who gives and the one who receives. But in love there is only one; the two join, unite, become inseparable. The 'I' and the 'you' vanish. To love means to lose oneself in the beloved.

How can you reach the womb of the Abyss to make it fruitful? This cannot be expressed, cannot be narrowed into words, cannot be subjected to laws; every man is completely free and has his own special liberation. No form of instruction exists, no Savior exists to open up the road. No road exists to be opened.

Eros? What other name may we give that impetus which becomes enchanted as soon as it casts its glance on matter and then longs to impress its features upon it? It confronts the body and longs to pass beyond it, to merge with the other erotic cry hidden in that body, to become one till both may vanish and become deathless by begetting sons. It approaches the soul and wishes to merge with it inseparably so that "you" and "I" may no longer exist; it blows on the mass of man — kind and wishes, by smashing the resistances of mind and body, to merge all breaths into one violent gale that may lift the earth! In moments of crisis this Erotic Love swoops down on men and joins them together by force — friends and foes, good and evil. It is a breath superior to all of them, independent of their desires and deeds. It is the spirit, the breathing of God on earth. It descends on men in whatever form it wishes — as dance, as eros, as hunger, as religion, as slaughter. It does not ask our permission.

ان الاحداث المعاصرة لم تكن سوى امور قديمة في روح زوربا ما دام هو نفسه قد تجاوزها ولا شك ان البرق والمراكب البخارية وسكك الحديد والاخلاق السائدة والوطن والدين كانت تبدو في عقله كبنادق عتيقة صدئة
لقد كانت روحه تتقدم باسرع مما يتقدم العالم

Μαζεύω τα σύνεργά μου: Όραση, ακοή, γέψη, όσφρηση, αφή, μυαλό, βράδυασε πια, τελεύει το μεροκάματο, γυρίζω σαν τον τυφλοπόντικα σπίτι μου, στο χώμα. Όχι γιατί κουράστηκα να δουλεύω, δεν κουράστηκα, μα ο ήλιος βασίλεψε.