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The human soul is heavy, clumsy, held in the mud of the flesh. Its perceptions are still coarse and brutish. It can divine nothing clearly, nothing with certainty.

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
Human
Clearly
Humans
Flesh
Brutish
Nothing
Perception
Coarse
Heavy
Clumsy
Divine
Perceptions
Stills
Mud
Still
Certainty
Soul
Held

More quotes by Nikos Kazantzakis

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God changes his appearance every second. Blessed is the man who can recognize him in all his disguises.
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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.
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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.
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Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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Everything in this world has a hidden meaning, I thought. Men, animals, trees, stars, they are all hieroglyphics woe to anyone who begins to decipher them and guess what they mean.... When you see them, you do not understand them. You think they are really men, animals, trees, stars. It is only years later, too late, that you understand.
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My soul comes from better worlds and I have an incurable homesickness of the stars.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right and to realize of a sudden that in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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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.
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You gave me your curse, holy Fathers. I give you a blessing: May you be as moral and religious as I am.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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The masses do not see the Sirens. They do not hear songs in the air. Blind, deaf, stooping, they pull at their oars in the hold of the earth. But the more select, the captains, harken to a Siren within them...and royally squander their lives with her.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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The ultimate, most holy form of theory is action.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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As long as there are flowers and children and birds in the world, have no fears: everything will be fine.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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Truly, everything in this world depended on time. Time ripened all. If you had time, you succeeded in working the human mud internally and turning it into spirit. Then you did not fear death. If you did not have time, you perished.
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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A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.
Nikos Kazantzakis
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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
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Be always restless, unsatisfied, unconforming. Whenever a habit becomes convenient, smash it! The greatest sin of all is satisfaction.
Nikos Kazantzakis