402 Quotes by Nikos Kazantzakis

Lions and Lambs, love and force, light and fire, good and evil: all things climb the same mountain, the mountain of God.

This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right and to realize of a sudden that in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale.

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.

No wide road leads to God.

When shall I at last retire into solitude alone, without companions, without joy and without sorrow, with only the sacred certainty that all is a dream? When, in my rags—without desires—shall I retire contented into the mountains? When, seeing that my body is merely sickness and crime, age and death, shall I—free, fearless, and blissful—retire to the forest? When? When, oh when?

What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams.

Cursed be all those on land and sea who eat their fill, cursed be all those who starve yet raise no hand in protest, cursed be all the bread, the wine, the meat which day by day descends deep in the entrails of the exploited man and turns not into freedom's cry, the murderer's ruthless knife!

As long as our souls remain strong, that is all that matters; as long as they don't decline. Because with the fall of certain souls in this world, the world itself will collapse. These are the pillars which support it. They are few, but enough.

Freedom was my first great desire. The second, which remains hidden within me to this day, tormenting me, was the desire for sanctity. Hero together with saint: such is mankind's supreme model.