Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" In religions which have lost their creative spark, the gods eventually become no more than poetic motifs or ornaments for decorating human solitude and walls. "

Nikos Kazantzakis

Walls

Creative

Lost

Related Quotes:

" In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can. "

" May God forgive me, but the letters of the alphabet frighten me terribly. They are sly, shameless demons - and dangerous! You open the inkwell, release them; they run off - and how will you ever get control of them again! "

" That part of Christ's nature which was profoundly human helps us to understand him and love him and to pursue his Passion as though it were our own. If he had not within him this warm human element, he would never be able to touch our hearts with such assurance and tenderness; he would not be able to become a model for our lives. "

" While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realise - sometimes with astonishment - how happy we had been. "

" Life is a crusade in the service of God. Whether we wished to or not, we set out as crusaders to free - not the Holy Sepulcher - but that God buried in matter and in our souls. "

" My 'Report to Greco' is not an autobiography. "

Nikos Kazantzakis

Autobiography

Report

" Happiness is a simple everyday miracle, like water, and we are not aware of it. "

Nikos Kazantzakis

Water

Simple

" Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels. "

" A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free. "

" There is only one woman in the world. One woman, with many faces. "

" The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. "

" Every man is half God, half man; he is both spirit and flesh. That is why the mystery of Christ is not simply a mystery for a particular creed: It is universal. "

" The human soul is heavy, clumsy, held in the mud of the flesh. Its perceptions are still coarse and brutish. It can divine nothing clearly, nothing with certainty. "

" Let your youth have free reign. It won't come again, so be bold, and no repenting. "

" The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness. "

" I knew that no matter what door you knock on in a Cretan village, it will be opened for you. A meal will be served in your honor, and you will sleep between the best sheets in the house. In Crete, the stranger is still the unknown god. Before him, all doors and all hearts are opened. "

" Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive. "

" My principal anguish, and the wellspring of all my joys and sorrows, has been the incessant merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh. "

" Throughout my life my greatest benefactors have been my dreams and my travels; very few men, living or dead, have helped me in my struggle. "

" One of man's greatest obligations is anger. "

" Behind each woman rises the austere, sacred and mysterious face of Aphrodite. "

" Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I'll tell you who you are. Some turn their food into fat and manure, some into work and good humour, and others, I'm told, into God. So there must be three sorts of men. "

" Everything in this world has a hidden meaning. "

" The masses do not see the Sirens. They do not hear songs in the air. Blind, deaf, stooping, they pull at their oars in the hold of the earth. But the more select, the captains, harken to a Siren within them... and royally squander their lives with her. "

" I said to the almond tree, 'Friend, speak to me of God,' and the almond tree blossomed. "

Nikos Kazantzakis

Friend

God

" 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. "

" We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life. "

" God hates a half-devil ten times more than an arch-devil! "

" My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry. "

" True teachers use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own. "