Nikos Kazantzakis

“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.”

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

“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.”

“How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. . . . All that is required to feel that here and now is happin...”

“An ardent desire to go took possession of me once more. Not because I wanted to leave - I was quite all right on this Cretan coast, and felt happy and free there and I needed nothing - but b...”

“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. Happines...”

“Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.”

“True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create t...”

“We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.”

“My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry.”

“When everything goes wrong, what a joy to test your soul and see if it has endurance and courage. An invisible and all-powerful enemy - some call him God, others the Devil, seem to rush upon...”

“May God forgive me, but the letters of the alphabet frighten me terribly. They are sly, shameless demons - and dangerous! You open the inkwell, release them; they run off - and how will you...”

“My principal anguish, and the wellspring of all my joys and sorrows, has been the incessant merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh.”

“The struggle between God and man breaks out in everyone, together with the longing for reconciliation... God does not love weak souls and flabby flesh. The spirit desires to wrestle with fle...”

“That part of Christ's nature which was profoundly human helps us to understand him and love him and to pursue his Passion as though it were our own. If he had not within him this warm human...”

“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 realise - sometimes with astonishment - how h...”

“Behind each woman rises the austere, sacred and mysterious face of Aphrodite.”

“My 'Report to Greco' is not an autobiography.”

“Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to unfasten your belt and look for a fight.”

“I said to the almond tree, 'Friend, speak to me of God,' and the almond tree blossomed.”