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"Fire is the first and final mask of my God. We dance and weep between two enormous pyres." Our thoughts and our bodies flash and glitter with reflec… - Nikos Kazantzakis
"Fire is the first and final mask of my God. We dance and weep between two enormous pyres." Our thoughts and our bodies flash and glitter with reflected light. Between the two pyres I stand serenely, my brain unshaken amid the vertigo, and I say: "Time is most short and space most narrow between these two pyres, the rhythm of this life is most sluggish, and I have no time, nor a place to dance in. I cannot wait." Then all at once the rhythm of the earth becomes a vertigo, time disappears, the moment whirls, becomes eternity, and every point in space — insect or star or idea — turns into dance.
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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
The essence of our God is obscure. It ripens continuously; perhaps victory is strenghened with our every valorous deed, but perhaps even all these agonizing struggles toward deliverance and victory are inferior to the nature of divinity. Whatever it might be, we fight on without certainty, and our virtue, uncertain of any rewards, acquires a profound nobility.
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What is the essence of our God? The struggle for freedom. In the indestructible darkness a flaming line ascends and emblazons the march of the Invisible. What is our duty? To ascend with this blood-drenched line. Whatever rushes upward and helps God to ascend is good. Whatever drags downward and impedes God from ascending is evil. All virtues and all evils take on a new value. They are freed from the moment and from earth, they exist completely within man, before and after man, eternally. For the essence of our ethic is not the salvation of man, who varies within time and space, but the salvation of God, who within a wide variety of flowing human forms and adventures is always the same, the indestructible rhythm which battles for freedom. We, as human beings, are all miserable persons, heartless, small, insignificant. But within us a superior essence drives us ruthlessly upward. From within this human mire divine songs have welled up, great ideas, violent loves, an unsleeping assault full of mystery, without beginning or end, without purpose, beyond every purpose.
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