Best 12 quotes of N. Kazantzakis on MyQuotes

Creation, like love, is a seductive pursuit filled with uncertainty and fluttering heartbeats. (Report to Greco)

Gradually, I began to understand that it does not matter very much what problem, whether big or small, is tormenting us; the only thing that matters is that we be tormented. In other words, that we exercise our minds in order to keep certainty from turning us into idiots, that we fight to open every closed door we find in front of us. (Report to Greco)

Love of liberty, the refusal to accept your soul's enslavement, not even in exchange for paradise; stalwart games over and above love and pain, over and above death; smashing even the most sacrosant of the molds when they are unable to contain you any longer - these are the great cries of Crete. (Report to Greco)

Lower those sable eyes regarding me, Lower them, my jewel; they are flogging me. (Report to Greco)

The human heart is a dark, unyielding mystery. It is a perforated jug with a mouth forever open; though all rivers of the earth pour in, it will remain empty and thirsting. The greatest of hopes had not filled it. Would it be filled now by the greatest of despairs? (Report to Greco)

The human heart is surely a deep, closed, blood-filled pit. When it opens, all the thirsting, inconsolable shades we have loved run to drink and be revived; they grow continually denser around us, blackening the air. Why do they run to drink the blood of our hearts? Because they realize that no other resurrection exists. (Report to Greco)

The soul knows full well (even though it pretends to forget many times) that it must render account to the paternal soil. I do not say "fatherland", I say "paternal soil". The paternal soil is something deeper, more modest, more reserved, and is composed of age-old pulverized bones.

To refuse ever to deny your youth, right up to extreme old age, to battle all life long to transubstantiate your adolescent flowering into a fruit-ladden tree - that, I belive, is the road of the fulfilled man. (Report to Greco)

Truly, nothing more resembles God's eyes than the eyes of a child; they see the world for the first time, and create it. Before this, the world is chaos. All creatures - animals, trees, men, stones; everything:forms, colors, voices, smells, lightning flashes - flow unexplained in front of the child's eyes (no, not in front of them, inside them), and he cannot fasten them down, cannot establish order. The child's world is made not of clay, to last, but of clouds. (Report to Greco)

What essence? I did not know at the time; I learned later. There is only one essence, always the same. As yet, man has found no other means to elevate himself - none but routing of matter and the submissions of the individual to an end which transcends the individual, even though that end be chimerical. When the heart believes and loves, nothing chimerical exists; nothing exists but courage, trust and fruitful action (Report to Greco)

What is the purpose? Do no ask. No one knows, not even God, as He advances along with us, He too, searching and being exposed to danger; He too is given a struggle. Hunger and injustice exist in the heart, as does abundance of darkness. The things you see are not specters; no matter how much blow, they will not be dispelled. They are flesh and bone. Touch them; they exist. Don't you hear a cry in the air? They are crying. What are they crying? Help! To whom they are crying? You! You: every man. Rise up. Our duty is not to ask questions, but to clasp hands one and all and mount the ascent. (Report to Greco)

Youth is a blind incongruous beast. It craves food but does not eat, is too timid to eat; it need simply nod to happiness, which strolls by on the street and would willingly stop, but it does not nod; it turns the faucet, permitting time to drain away uselessly and be lost, as though time were water. A beast that does not know it is a beast - such is youth. (Report to Greco)