Quotes by Nikos Kazantzakis

About Nikos Kazantzakis:

Nikos Kazantzakis was a Greek writer and philosopher, celebrated for his novel Zorba the Greek, considered his magnum opus. He became known globally after the 1964 release of the Michael Cacoyannis film Zorba the Greek, based on the novel. He gained renewed fame with the 1988 Martin Scorsese adaptation of his book The Last Temptation of Christ.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

How ought we to love God, Father?" he asked in a whisper. "By loving men, my son" "And how ought we to love men?" "By trying to guide them along the right path" "And what is the right path?" "The one that rises" - Nikos Kazanzakis, Christ Recrucified

Nikos Kazantzakis

Oh, how crafty of religion, I cried out indignantly, to transplant rewards and punishments into a future life in order to comfort cowards and the enslaved and aggrieved, enabling them to bow their necks patiently before their masters, and to endure t...

Nikos Kazantzakis

The creator wrestles with a hard, invisible substance, a substance far superior to him. Even the greatest victor emerges vanquished, because our deepest secret, the only one that deserves expression, always remains unexpressed. This secret never subm...

Nikos Kazantzakis

Beauty always had a purpose: to be of service to life.

Nikos Kazantzakis

By means of poetry all this suffering and effort could be transformed into dream; no matter how much of the ephemeral existed, poetry could immortalize it by turning it into song. Only two or three primitive passions had governed me until this time: ...

Nikos Kazantzakis

We are to blame if reality does not take the form we desire. Whatever we have not desired with sufficient strength, that we call nonexistent. Desire it, imbrue it with your blood, your sweat, your tears, and it will take on a body. Reality is nothing...

Nikos Kazantzakis

I tried to establish order over the chaos of my imagination, but this essence, the same that presented itself to me still hazily when I was a child, has always struck me as the very heart of truth. It is our duty to set ourselves an end beyond our in...

Nikos Kazantzakis

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...

Nikos Kazantzakis

Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards.

Nikos Kazantzakis

Never in my life had I felt so tangibly and with such astonishment that hate, by passing successively through comprehension, mercy, and sympathy, can be transformed into love.

Nikos Kazantzakis

Every integral man has inside him, in his heart of hearts, a mystic center around which all else revolves. This mystic whirling lends unity to his thoughts and actions; it helps him find or invent the cosmic harmony. For some this center is love, for...

Nikos Kazantzakis

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 ...

Nikos Kazantzakis

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,...

Nikos Kazantzakis

But then I was young, and to be young means to undertake to demolish the world and to have the gall to wish to erect a new and better one in its place.

Nikos Kazantzakis

Happy the youth who believes that his duty is to remake the world and bring it more in accord with virtue and justice, more in accord with his own heart. Woe to whoever commences his life without lunacy.

Nikos Kazantzakis

But how can anyone put a bridle on man's vanity and arrogance? But how can Purity walk the earth without covering her feet with mud?

Nikos Kazantzakis

What do you have to fear? Nothing. Whom do you have to fear? No one. Why? Because whoever has joined forces with God obtains three great privileges: omnipotence without power, intoxication without wine, and life without death.

Nikos Kazantzakis

You know all about love, but that is not enough. You must also learn that hate comes from God as well, that it too is in the Lord's service. And in times like these, with the world fallen to the state it has, hate serves God more than love.

Nikos Kazantzakis

In order to mount to heaven, you used the Inferno to give you momentum. "The further down you gain your momentum," you often used to tell me, "the higher you shall be able to reach. The militant Christian's greatest worth is not his virtue, but his s...

Nikos Kazantzakis

Thy designs are a bottomless pit. How can I descend into this pit to examine it? Thou lookest thousands of years into the future and then Thou judgest. What today seems an injustice to man's minute brain becomes, thousands of years hence, the mother ...

Nikos Kazantzakis

Author Bio

  • NameNikos Kazantzakis
  • DescriptionGreek writer
  • BornFebruary 18, 1883
  • DiedOctober 26, 1957
  • CountryGreece
  • ProfessionScreenwriter; Journalist; Poet; Translator; Novelist; Philosopher; Playwright; Writer
  • Awards