Top 200 Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Discipline is the highest of all virtues. Only so may strength and desire be counterbalanced and the endeavors of man bear fruit.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

52. “What happiness this is: to fly, skimming over the earth just as we do in our dreams! Life has become a dream. Can this be the meaning of paradise?”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

53. “As I watched the seagulls, I thought, That’s the road to take; find the absolute rhythm and follow it with absolute trust.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

54. “I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

55. “All roads lead to the earth; the abyss leads to God. Jump!”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

56. “The sole way to save oneself is to save others. Or to struggle to save others -even that is sufficient.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

57. “All those who actually live the mysteries of life haven’t the time to write, and all those who have the time don’t live them! D’you see?”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

58. “What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

59. “You can knock on a deaf man’s door forever.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

60. “We’re going to start with small, easy things; then, little by little we shall try our hand at the big things. And after that, after we finish the big things, we shall undertake the impossible.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

61. “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

62. “The ultimate, most holy form of theory is action.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

63. “God changes his appearance every second. Blessed is the man who can recognize him in all his disguises.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

64. “Overdraw me Lord, and who cares if I break!”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

65. “The truth is that we all are one, that all of us together create god, that god is not man’s ancestor, but his descendant.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

66. “The more devils we have within us, the more chance we have to form angels.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

67. “Inexperience loves to preach.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

68. “Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

69. “Monarch of earth, I shall confess my secret craft: I’ve always fought to purify wild flame to light, and kindle whatever light I found to burst in flame.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

70. “We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this circle God. We might have given it any other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

71. “If a woman sleeps alone it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart, but there is one sin He will not forgive. If a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

72. “Life’s true face is the skull.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

73. “The canary is like a man’s soul. It sees bars around it, but instead of despairing, it sings.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

74. “I was happy, I knew that. 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 realize – sometimes with astonishment – how happy we had been.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

75. “I said only one word, brought only one message: Love. Love – nothing else.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

76. “Love responsibility. Say: It is my duty, and mine alone, to save the earth. If it is not saved, then I alone am to blame.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

77. “This, I thought, is how great visionaries and poets see everything- as if for the first time. Each morning they see a new world before their eyes; they do not really see it, they create it.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

78. “As you walk, you cut open and create that riverbed into which the stream of your descendants shall enter and flow.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

79. “Alas for him who seeks salvation in good only! Balanced on God’s strong shoulders, Good and Evil flap together like two mighty wings and lift him high.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

80. “Never in my life have I feared death as much as I feared that resurrection.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

81. “Happy the youth who believes that his duty is to remake the world and bring it more in accord with virtue and justice, more in accord with his own heart. Woe to whoever commences his life without lunacy.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

82. “Once, I saw a bee drown in honey, and I understood.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

83. “There is no harsher means of punishment, than to answer malice with kindness.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

84. “When an almond tree became covered with blossoms in the heart of winter, all the trees around it began to jeer. ‘What vanity,’ they screamed, ‘what insolence! Just think, it believes it can bring spring in this way!’ The flowers of the almond tree blushed for shame. ‘Forgive me, my sisters,’ said the tree. ‘I swear I did not want to blossom, but suddenly I felt a warm springtime breeze in my heart.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

85. “God sends rain, but He also sends hoods; and when the rain grows heavier, He sends a cave.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

86. “A fault confessed is half redressed.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

87. “Freedom was my first great desire. The second, which remains hidden within me to this day, tormenting me, was the desire for sanctity. Hero together with saint: such is mankind’s supreme model.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

88. “Yes, there is weeping, even in heaven, but it is for those who are still crawling on the earth.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

89. “Every village has its simpleton, and if one does not exist they invent one to pass the time.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

90. “Time is round, and it rolls quickly.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

91. “Life on earth means: the sprouting of wings.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

92. “I loved my body and did not want it to perish; I loved my soul and did not want it to decay. I have fought to reconcile these two primordial forces.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

93. “To think things out properly and fairly, a fellow’s got to be calm and old and toothless: When you’re an old gaffer with no teeth, it’s easy to say: ‘Damn it, boys, you mustn’t bite!’ But, when you’ve got all thirty-two teeth...”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

94. “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

95. “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

96. “I hate all virtues based on food and bloated bellies; though food and drink are good, I’m better slaked and fed by that inhuman flame which burns in our black bowels. I like to name that flame which burns within me God!”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

97. “Only after I’ve seen the visible can I imagine what the invisible is.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

98. “He who is invisible sees more clearly, hears more clearly, and is better able to read the thoughts of men.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

99. “I should learn to run, to wrestle, to swim, to ride horses, to row, to drive a car, to fire a rifle. I should fill my soul with flesh. I should fill my flesh with soul. In fact, I should reconcile at last within me the two internal antagonists.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

100. “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!”

— Nikos Kazantzakis