Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes

When everyone drowns and I'm the only one to escape, God is protecting me. When everyone else is sav...

You can knock on a deaf man's door forever.

When you've made up your mind, no use lagging behind, go ahead and no relenting,Let your youth have ...

I should learn to run, to wrestle, to swim, to ride horses, to row, to drive a car, to fire a rifle....

Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a fo...

Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all, in my view, is not to have one.

You have everything but one thing: madness. A man needs a little madness or else - he never dares cu...

To think things out properly and fairly, a fellow's got to be calm and old and toothless: When you'r...

An ardent desire to go took possession of me once more. Not because I wanted to leave - I was quite ...

The human soul is heavy, clumsy, held in the mud of the flesh. Its perceptions are still coarse and ...

Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I'll tell you who you are. Some turn their food into ...

…Man’s heart is a ditch full of blood. The loved ones who have died throw themselves down on the ban...

No. I don't believe in anything. How many times must I tell you that? I don't believe in anything an...

I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodne...

It was certainly not this mummified and outrageously painted old woman he was seeing before him, but...

The unfailing rhythm of the seasons, the ever-turning wheel of life, the four facets of the earth wh...

If a woman sleeps alone it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart, but there is one sin H...

I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wr...

How could I, who loved life so intensely, have let myself be entangled for so long in that balderdas...

Leave nothing for death but a burned-out castle

Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are. Some turn their food into ...

Luck is blind, they say. It can’t see where it’s going and keeps running into people…and the people ...

The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical.

You will, Judas, my brother. God will give you the strength, as much as you lack, because it is nece...

My route, Sior Francis—and don't be surprised when you hear it—my route when I set out to find God.....

You know all about love, but that is not enough. You must also learn that hate comes from God as wel...

Forgetting himself for a moment, Francis brought his hand out from under his frock in order to bless...

But how can anyone put a bridle on man's vanity and arrogance? But how can Purity walk the earth wit...

Madness, Brother Masseo, is the salt which prevents good sense from rotting.

I felt sorry for the inhabitants and went into the forest to admonish the wolf in God's name not to ...

It's possible to save oneself from Satan, Father Francis, but from men—never!

It is impossible for me to remember how many days or weeks went by in this way. Time is round, and i...

Thy designs are a bottomless pit. How can I descend into this pit to examine it? Thou lookest thousa...

I had taken up my quill to begin writing many times before now, but I always abandoned it quickly: e...

In order to mount to heaven, you used the Inferno to give you momentum. "The further down you gain y...

Because what God wants, that, and only that, is also what we want—but we don't know it. God comes an...

I did not know what I was going to do with my life; before anything else I wanted to find an answer,...

By means of poetry all this suffering and effort could be transformed into dream; no matter how much...

Happy the youth who believes that his duty is to remake the world and bring it more in accord with v...

Every integral man has inside him, in his heart of hearts, a mystic center around which all else rev...

Man hurries, God does not. That is why man's works are uncertain and maimed, while God's are flawles...

I tried to establish order over the chaos of my imagination, but this essence, the same that present...

Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a ...

But then I was young, and to be young means to undertake to demolish the world and to have the gall ...

We are to blame if reality does not take the form we desire. Whatever we have not desired with suffi...

The struggle between God and man breaks out in everyone, together with the longing for reconciliatio...

Oh, how crafty of religion, I cried out indignantly, to transplant rewards and punishments into a fu...

Never in my life had I felt so tangibly and with such astonishment that hate, by passing successivel...

How ought we to love God, Father?" he asked in a whisper."By loving men, my son""And how ought we to...

How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little bra...

When everything goes wrong, what a joy to test your soul and see if it has endurance and courage. An...

With the passage of days in this godly isolation [desert], my heart grew calm. It seemed to fill wit...

Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I'll tell you who you are. Some turn their food into ...

I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge or Virtue or Goodness...

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

I said to the almond tree, 'Friend, speak to me of God,' and the almond tree blossomed.

True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross...

What is love?It's not empathy, nor kindness.Empathy takes two, the one who hurts and the one who emp...

Life's true face is the skull.

The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.

Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.

In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.

Happiness is a simple everyday miracle, like water, and we are not aware of it.

I lack nothing, I tell you!”“Nothing?” I asked. “Not even heaven?”He lowered his head and was silent...

Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive.

I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.

One of man's greatest obligations is anger.

While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness i...

A weak soul does not have the endurance to resist the flesh for very long. It grows heavy, becomes f...

My soul comes from better worlds and I have an incurable homesickness of the stars.

Every perfect traveller always creates the country where he travels.

Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.