All hopes and despairs vanish in the voracious, funneling whirlwind of God. God laughs, wails, kills, sets us on fire, and then leaves us in the midd… - Nikos Kazantzakis

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All hopes and despairs vanish in the voracious, funneling whirlwind of God. God laughs, wails, kills, sets us on fire, and then leaves us in the middle of the way, charred embers. And I rejoice to feel between my temples, in the flicker of an eyelid, the beginning and the end of the world. I condense into a lightning moment the seeding, sprouting, blossoming, fructifying, and the disappearance of every tree, animal, man, star, and god. All Earth is a seed planted in the coils of my mind. Whatever struggles for numberless years to unfold and fructify in the dark womb of matter bursts in my head like a small and silent lightning flash. Ah! let us gaze intently on this lightning flash, let us hold it for a moment, let us arrange it into human speech. Let us transfix this momentary eternity which encloses everything, past and future, but without losing in the immobility of language any of its gigantic erotic whirling.

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About Nikos Kazantzakis

Nikos Kazantzakis (18 February 1883 – 26 October 1957) was a Greek novelist, poet, playwright and philosopher.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Native Name: Νίκος Καζαντζάκης
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Additional quotes by Nikos Kazantzakis

كنت أعجب لقوته هذة وقدرته على احتقار البشر إلى هذا الحد، وفي نفس الوقت لوجود هذة الرغبة عنده في أن يعيش ويعمل معهم. أما أنا فإما أن أصبح ناسكاً، وإما أن أزين البشر بريشٍ زائف كي أستطيع تحملهم.

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

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...I spent the whole morning coiled up in front of the fire, with my hands over it, eating nothing, motionless, just listening to the first rain of the season, softly falling. I was thinking of nothing. Rolled up in a ball, like a mole in damp soil, my brain was resting. I could hear the slight movements, murmurings and nibblings of the earth, and the rain falling and the seeds swelling. I could feel the sky and the earth copulating as in primitive times when they mated like a man and woman and had children. I could hear the sea before me, all along the shore, roaring like a wild beast and lapping with its tongue to slake its thirst.

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