402 Quotes by Nikos Kazantzakis

An ardent desire to go took possession of me once more. Not because I wanted to leave – I was quite all right on this Cretan coast, and felt happy and free there and I needed nothing – but because I have always been consumed with one desire; to touch and see as much as possible of the earth and the sea before I die.

There is only one essence, always the same. As yet, man has found no other means to elevate himself – none but the routing of matter and the submission of the individual to an end which transcends the individual, even though that end be chimerical. When the heart believes and loves, nothing chimerical exists; nothing exists but.

An old fisherman heard all this and shook his head. “This is what happens to those who don’t get married,” he said. “All they want to do is save the world, by hook or by crook. The sperm rises to their heads and attacks their brains. For God’s sake, all of you: get married, let your forces loose on women and have children in order to calm yourselves!

What is love? It is not simply compassion, not simply kindness. In compassion there are two: the one who suffers and the one who feels compassion. In kindness there are two: the one who gives and the one who receives. But in love there is only one; the two join, unite, become inseparable. The ‘I’ and the ‘you’ vanish. To love means to lose oneself in the beloved.

Good Lord, just think what poor old God must go through also,” he said with a laugh. “He certainly got himself in hot water when he created the world. The fish screams, Don’t blind me, Lord; don’t let me enter the nets! The fisherman screams, Blind the fish, Lord; make him enter the nets! Which one is God supposed to listen to? Sometimes he listens to the fish, sometimes to the fisherman – and that’s the way the world goes round!

I realized that meals, too, are a spiritual service and that meat, bread, and wine are the raw materials from which spirit is formed.

If you have faith, a splinter from an old door will become a holy relic. And if you have no faith the entire holy cross will become an old door.

Man is a brute,′ he said, striking the pebbles with his stick. ‘A great brute. Your lordship doesn’t realise this. It seems everything’s been easy for you, but you ask me! A brute, I tell you! If you’re cruel to him, he respects and fears you. If you’re kind to him, he plucks your eyes out.

We sense happiness with difficulty while experiencing it. Only when it has passed and we look back do we suddenly comprehend, sometimes with astonishment, how happy we have been. I, however, on this Cretan shore, was experiencing happiness while being simultaneously aware of my happiness.