My principle anguish and the source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh. Nikos Kazantzakis More Quotes by Nikos Kazantzakis More Quotes From Nikos Kazantzakis I possess no weapon but love. With that I have come to do battle. Help me! Nikos Kazantzakis battle weapons life Thus night with all her snares passed through the upper world and baited all heads sweetly, fed all foolish hopes, for night can bring to men all shrewish day denies, wrapped as a gift in the green leaves of opiate dream. Nikos Kazantzakis dream men night Die every day. Be reborn again every day. Nikos Kazantzakis reborn dies death Two equally steep and bold paths may lead to the same peak. To act as if death did not exist, or to act thinking every minute of death, is perhaps the same thing. Nikos Kazantzakis may two thinking To cleave that sea [the Aegean] in the gentle autumnal season, murmuring the name of each islet, is to my mind the joy most apt to transport the heart of man into paradise. Nikos Kazantzakis names heart men We have our brush and colors - paint Paradise and in we go. Nikos Kazantzakis color imagination inspirational God is action, complete with mistakes, fumblings, persistence, agony. God is not the power that has found eternal equilibrium, but the power that is forever breaking every equilibrium, forever searching for a higher one. Nikos Kazantzakis persistence god mistake Discipline is the highest of all virtues. Only so may strength and desire be counterbalanced and the endeavors of man bear fruit. Nikos Kazantzakis discipline desire men He who is invisible sees more clearly, hears more clearly, and is better able to read the thoughts of men. Nikos Kazantzakis invisible able men How does the light of a star set out and plunge into black eternity in its immortal course? The star dies, but the light never dies; such also is the cry of freedom. Nikos Kazantzakis freedom stars light You gave me your curse, holy Fathers. I give you a blessing: May you be as moral and religious as I am. Nikos Kazantzakis religious blessing father The sole way to save oneself is to save others. Or to struggle to save others -even that is sufficient. Nikos Kazantzakis sole struggle way 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! Nikos Kazantzakis wine men hands A magical portal opened inside my mind and conducted me into an astonishing world. [...] Before this moment I had divined but had never known with such positiveness that the world is extremely large and that suffering and toil are the companions and fellow warriors not only of Cretan, but of every man. [...] That 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. Nikos Kazantzakis dream song mean Inexperience loves to preach. Nikos Kazantzakis inexperience The major and almost only theme of all my work is the struggle of man with "God": the unyielding, inextinguishable struggle of the naked worm called "man" against the terrifying power and darkness of the forces within him and around him. Nikos Kazantzakis darkness struggle men Within this arena, which grows more stable night after day, generations work and love and hope and vanish. New generations tread on the corpses of their fathers, continue the work above the abyss and struggle to tame the dread mystery. How? By cultivating a single field, by kissing a woman, by studying a stone, an animal, an idea. Nikos Kazantzakis kissing struggle father Once more there sounded within me the terrible warning that there is only one life for all men, that there is only one life for all men, that there is no other and that all that can be enjoyed must be enjoyed here. In eternity no other chance will be given to us. Nikos Kazantzakis chance warning men There's a devil inside me which cries, "You're not the son of the Carpenter, you're the son of King David! You are not a man, you are the Son of man whom Daniel prophesied." And still more: "The Son of God! And still more: God! Nikos Kazantzakis kings men son Death's dry bones glowed with light in the erotic dark but he woke not nor felt the two warm bodies merge; the male worm then took heart and in his wife's ear whispered: "With one sweet kiss, dear wife, we've conquered conquering Death! Nikos Kazantzakis dark heart sweet
