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 humor, and others, I’m told, into God. So there must be three sorts of men. I’m not one of the worst, boss, nor yet one of the best. I’m somewhere in between the two. What I eat I turn into work and good humor. That’s not too bad, after all!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes

You, too, have a devil inside you but you still don’t know his name and because you don’t know his name, you suffocate. Baptize him, Boss, and you’ll find relief.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Our body is a ship that sails on deep blue waters. What is our goal? To be shipwrecked!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Time is not a field, to be measured in rods, nor a sea, to be measured in miles; it is a heart beat.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Life is trouble. Death – no. To live – do you know what that means? To undo your belt and look for trouble!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

And I am glad, because although no one else in the world remembers him now, he will live inside me as long as I live. We shall die together. This grandfather was the first to make me wish not to die – so that the dead within me should not die. Since then, many departed dead ones have sunk, not into the grave, but into my memory, and I know now that as long as I live they shall live too.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I realized that meals, too, are a spiritual service and that meat, bread, and wine are the raw materials from which spirit is formed.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

The right path is the ascent.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

A fault confessed is half redressed.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Because what God wants, that, and only that, is also what we want – but we don’t know it. God comes and awakens our souls, revealing to them their real, though unknown, desire. This is the secret, Brother Leo. To do the will of God means to do my own most deeply hidden will.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

The higher we went the more our spirits seemed to become purged and exalted. Once again I felt the influence on the soul of pure air, easy breathing and a vast horizon. Anyone would think the soul, too, was an animal with lungs and nostrils, and that it needed oxygen, was stifled in the dust or in the midst of too much stale breath.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Free your self from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But isn’t that, too, a form of slavery?

— Nikos Kazantzakis

Man is a brute,′ he said, striking the pebbles with his stick. ‘A great brute. Your lordship doesn’t realise this. It seems everything’s been easy for you, but you ask me! A brute, I tell you! If you’re cruel to him, he respects and fears you. If you’re kind to him, he plucks your eyes out.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

We sense happiness with difficulty while experiencing it. Only when it has passed and we look back do we suddenly comprehend, sometimes with astonishment, how happy we have been. I, however, on this Cretan shore, was experiencing happiness while being simultaneously aware of my happiness.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

What sort of madness comes over us to make us throw ourselves on another man, when he’s done nothing to us, and bite him, cut his nose off, tear his ear out, run him through the guts – and all the time, calling on the Almighty to help us! Does it mean we want the Almighty to go and cut off noses and ears and rip people up?

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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 humor, and others, I’m told, into God. So there must be three sorts of men. I’m not one of the worst, boss, nor yet one of the best. I’m somewhere in between the two. What I eat I turn into work and good humor. That’s not too bad, after all!

— Nikos Kazantzakis

She was touched and began to open her heart to me. It was like opening an old chest, full of spices, yellowed love-letters and ancient dresses.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I’m alone and am suffocating because I’m unable to give voice to my emotions.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

I am not yet a complete person. I am struggling to conquer my weakness. I am good at finding what is right, at enflaming various souls, at lighting up various minds. But I am unable, on my own, to come in contact with people, to battle against indifference, ridicule or even small talk.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

This distance between my dreams and my capabilities makes me so furious that I want to die–to die from spite and also from grief.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

My heart is always heavy. No matter where I go, I have no pleasure. I’m hiding. Everything that I do, write and think strikes me as unworthy. And human beings are horrible, ignoble companions. I often think, furthermore, that the only thing worthy of our lofty nature is death.

— Nikos Kazantzakis
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