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" 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. "

Nikos Kazantzakis

Create

Bridges

Own

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

" 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. "

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

" Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality. "

" All my life, I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point, until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console mankind. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

Nikos Kazantzakis

Friend

God

" I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge or Virtue or Goodness or Victory but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe! "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Nothing is nearer to us than heaven. The earth is beneath our feet, and we tread upon it, but heaven is within us. "

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

Nikos Kazantzakis

Autobiography

Report

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

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

" Everything in this world has a hidden meaning. "

" 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. "

" When everything goes wrong, what a joy to test your soul and see if it has endurance and courage. An invisible and all-powerful enemy - some call him God, others the Devil, seem to rush upon us to destroy us; but we are not destroyed. "

" The struggle between God and man breaks out in everyone, together with the longing for reconciliation... God does not love weak souls and flabby flesh. The spirit desires to wrestle with flesh which is strong and full of resistance. It is a carnivorous bird which is incessantly hungry; it eats flesh and, by assimilating it, makes it disappear. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to unfasten your belt and look for a fight. "

" 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. "

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

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