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the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!

Nikos Kazantzakis

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Nikos Kazantzakis
Age: 74 †
Born: 1883
Born: February 18
Died: 1957
Died: October 26
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Playwright
Poet
Politician
Screenwriter
Translator
Writer
Heraclion
Nicos Kazantzakes
Even
Goodness
Something
Sacred
Men
Victory
Highest
Virtue
Despairing
Greater
Awe
Knowledge
Attain
Point
Heroic

More quotes by Nikos Kazantzakis

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Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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I surrender myself to everything. I love, I feel pain, I struggle. The world seems to me wider than the mind, my heart a dark and almighty mystery.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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I am a weak, ephemeral creature made of mud and dream. But I feel all the powers of the universe whirling within me.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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Whoever climbed the Lord's mountain had to possess clean hands and an innocent heart otherwise the Summit would kill him. Today the doorway is deserted. Soiled hands and sinful hearts are able to pass by without fear, for the Summit kills no longer.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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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
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Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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I say one thing, you write another, and those who read you understand still something else! I say: cross, death, kingdom of heaven, God...and what do you understand? Each of you attaches his own suffering, interests and desires to each of these sacred words, and my words disappear, my soul is lost. I can't stand it any longer!
Nikos Kazantzakis
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Inexperience loves to preach.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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Only after I've seen the visible can I imagine what the invisible is.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery? To sacrifice oneself to an idea, to a race, to God? Or does it mean that the higher the model the longer the longer the tether of our slavery?
Nikos Kazantzakis
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Good Lord, how can the rich bear to die?
Nikos Kazantzakis
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Today, any action anywhere on earth has an immediate repercussion on all five continents. News of a victory of the Eastern armies in Morocco or Shanghai travels instantly, thanks to modern means of communication, to all Eastern peoples and fills them with enthusiasm and faith. This phenomenon is, of course, unprecedented in the history of man.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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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
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The ultimate, most holy form of theory is action.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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I know now: I do not hope for anything. I do not fear anything, I have freed myself from both the mind and the heart, I have mounted much higher, I am free .
Nikos Kazantzakis
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Man is able, and has the duty, to reach the furthest point on the road he has chosen. Only by means of hope can we attain what is beyond hope.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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What, then is our duty? It is to carefully distinguish the historic moment in which we live and to consciously assign our small energies to a specific battlefield. The more we are in phase with the current which leads the way, the more we aid man in his difficult, uncertain, danger-fraught ascent toward salvation.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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All my life I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point, until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console mankind.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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We are not men, to have need of another, an eternal life we are women, and for us one moment with man we love is everlasting Paradise, one moment far from the man we love is everlasting hell. It is here on earth that we women love out eternity
Nikos Kazantzakis
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Every obstacle in his journey became a milestone, an occasion for further triumph. We have a model in front of us now, a model who blazes our trail and gives us strength.
Nikos Kazantzakis