Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakiswas a Greek writer, celebrated for his novels, which include Zorba the Greek, Christ Recrucified, Captain Michalis, and The Last Temptation of Christ. He also wrote plays, travel books, memoirs and philosophical essays such as The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises...
NationalityGreek
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth18 February 1883
CityHeraklion, Greece
struggle eye night
The struggle between God and man breaks out in everyone, together with the longing for reconciliation. Most often this struggle is unconscious and short-lived. A weak soul does not have the endurance to resist the flesh for very long. It grows heavy, becomes flesh itself, and the contest ends. But among responsible men, men who keep their eyes riveted day and night upon the Supreme Duty, the conflict between flesh and spirit breaks out mercilessly and may last until death.
morning eye perspective
This, I thought, is how great visionaries and poets see everything- as if for the first time. Each morning they see a new world before their eyes; they do not really see it, they create it.
rain eye men
Man hurries, God does not. That is why man's works are uncertain and maimed, while God's are flawless and sure. My eyes welling with tears, I vowed never to transgress this eternal law again. Like a tree I would be blasted by wind, struck by sun and rain, and would wait with confidence; the long-desired hour of flowering and fruit would come.
country eye sea
All my life one of my greatest desires has been to travel-to see and touch unknown countries, to swim in unknown seas, to circle the globe, observing new lands, seas, people, and ideas with insatiable appetite, to see everything for the first time and for the last time, casting a slow, prolonged glance, then to close my eyes and feel the riches deposit themselves inside me calmly or stormily according to their pleasure, until time passes them at last through its fine sieve, straining the quintessence out of all the joys and sorrows.
inspirational real eye
The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.
children eye reality
Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality," says one of my favorite Byzantine mystics. I did this when a child; I do it now as well in the most creative moments of my life.
eye men doe
No! No! Never acknowledge the limitations of man. Smash all boundaries! Deny whatever your eyes see. Die every moment, but say: Death does not exist.'
change eye opportunity
Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.
expect fear
I expect nothing. I fear no one. I am free.
speak tree
I said to the almond tree, ''Friend, speak to me of God,'' and the almond tree blossomed.
death reborn dies
Die every day. Be reborn again every day.
dark ends abyss
We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.
bears rich lord
Good Lord, how can the rich bear to die?
life military war
What, then is our duty? It is to carefully distinguish the historic moment in which we live and to consciously assign our small energies to a specific battlefield. The more we are in phase with the current which leads the way, the more we aid man in his difficult, uncertain, danger-fraught ascent toward salvation.