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
pain struggle book
This book was not written because I wanted to offer a supreme model to the man who struggles; I wanted to show him that he must not fear pain, temptation or death - because all three can be conquered, all three have already been conquered. Christ suffered pain, and since then pain has been sanctified. Temptation fought until the very last moment to lead him astray, and Temptation was defeated. Christ died on the Cross, and at that instant death was vanquished forever.
pain struggle heart
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.
pain struggle ignorance
What first truly stirred my soul was not fear or pain, nor was it pleasure or games; it was the yearning for freedom. I had to gain freedom-but from what, from whom? Little by little, in the course of time, I mounted freedom's rough unaccommodating ascent. To gain freedom first of all from the Turk, that was the initial step; after that, later, this new struggle began: to gain freedom from the inner Turk-from ignorance, malice and envy, from fear and laziness, from dazzling false ideas; and finally from idols, all of them, even the most revered and beloved.
color paradise paint
You have your brush, you have your colors, you paint the paradise, then in you go.
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.
games giving gold
May he be cursed on earth who gives his trust to virtue, that bankrupt crone who takes our life's pure gold and gives but bad receipts for payment in the lower world. Ah, passers-by that stroll, travelers that come and go, all that I had, I placed on virtue, and lost the game!
boys thinking two
To think things out properly and fairly, a fellow's got to be calm and old and toothless: When you're an old gaffer with no teeth, it's easy to say: 'Damn it, boys, you mustn't bite!' But, when you've got all thirty-two teeth...
book long paper
How could I, who loved life so intensely, have let myself be entangled for so long in that balderdash of books and paper blackened with ink!
time village doe
Every village has its simpleton, and if one does not exist they invent one to pass the time.