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!
They had no fear of death, and whoever has no fear of death – the centurion had often meditated on this here in the East – whoever has no fear of death is immortal.
There, in the desert, there’s hunger, thirst, prostrations – and God. Here there’s food, wine, women – and God. Everywhere God. So, why go look for him in the desert?
Nothing is nearer to us than heaven. The earth is beneath our feet and we tread upon it, but heaven is within us.
Zorba sees everything everyday as if for the first time.
Every one follows his own bent. Man is like a tree. You’ve never quarrelled with a fig tree because it doesn’t bear cherries, have you?
Leave nothing for death but a burned-out castle.
What is the definition of heaven? Complete happiness. But how can anyone be completely happy when he looks out from heaven and sees his brothers and sisters being punished in hell? How can paradise exist if the inferno exists also? That is why I say – and let this sink deep down into your minds, my sisters – that either we shall all be saved, all of us together, or else we shall all be damned. If a person is killed at the other end of the earth, we are killed; if a person is saved, we are saved.
Leave your books alone. Aren’t you ashamed? Man is a wild beast, and wild beasts don’t read.
It’s all because of doing things by halves and saying things by halves, being good by halves, that the world is in the mess it’s in today.
To do the will of God means to do my own most deeply hidden will. Within even the most unworthy of men there is a servant of God, asleep.
God replies every time we question him, but our flesh is bemired and almost deaf: we do not hear.
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.
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 of man’s salvation. If what today we term injustice did not exist, perhaps true justice would never come to mankind.
It’s possible to save oneself from Satan, Father Francis, but from men – never!
If they were to ask me what road leads to heaven, I would answer them: the most difficult!
There are three kinds of souls, three kinds of prayers. One: I am a bow in your hands, Lord. Draw me lest I rot. Two: Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break. Three: Overdraw me, and who cares if I break! “Choose!
Keep your distance, boss! Don’t make men too bold, don’t go telling them we’re equal, we’ve got the same rights, or they’ll go straight and trample on your rights; they’ll steal your bread and leave you to die of hunger. Keep your distance, boss, by all the good things I wish you!
The human soul is heavy, clumsy, held in the mud of the flesh.
Oh, yes. Wife. Children. Home. Everything. The full catastrophe.