Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes

Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.

Christianity seems at first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as a joke. Every one there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes.

Self is the opaque veil that hides the Face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction.

God cannot be explained... God can only be lived.

I am Walter, a body, but more important than the body is my spirit.

When the Seven Deities let me know what I must do to be complete again - even though I will be stronger and more than just a regular mortal man - I will fulfill that mission and become whole once more.

The Spirit bears witness. Ecstasy and enlightenment, inspiration and intuition are not necessary. Happy is the man who is worthy of these; but woe unto us if we wait for such experiences; woe unto us if we do not perceive that these things are of secondary importance.

As a lotus flower is born in water, grows in water and rises out of water to stand above it unsoiled, so I, born in the world, raised in the world having overcome the world, live unsoiled by the world

When he bowed to all those buddhas, the buddhas he bowed to were beyond his own understanding. Again and again he did it.

One can see light above the head; that indicates a consciousness outside the body. But that itself is not the Truth-Consciousness or Vijnana. But much light descending from there illumines this consciousness.

The Master would insist that the final barrier to our attaining God was the word and concept God.

With all your science can you tell me how it is, and when it is, that light comes into the soul?

Now this spirit is admirably mortified by the exercise of patience. It involves also a continual practice of the presence of God; for we may be come upon at any moment for an almost heroic display of good temper. It is a short road to unselfishness; for nothing is left to self. All that seems to belong most intimately to self, to be self's private property, such as time, home, and rest, are invaded by these continual trials of patience.

The measure of charity may be taken from the want of desires. As desires diminish in the soul, charity increases in it; and when it no longer feels any desire, then it possesses perfect charity.

When you push against the boundaries of experience into the twilight of the unknown, the Lord will strengthen you. The beauty of your eternal soul will begin to unfold.

The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.

Enthusiasm is the height of man; it is the passing from the human to the divine.

The soul is perfected by knowledge and virtue.

When virtue is pictured as innocence and innocence equated with childlikeness, the implication is obviously that knowledge and experience are no longer media of goodness, but have become in themselves contaminating. This is a very despairing outlook, in its way as black as Augustine's original sin, for it supposes that original goodness will in all likelihood be defiled...It surrenders the attempt to represent virtue in a mature phase.

He who has realized the Self in the Heart has transcended the dualities and is never perplexed.

The reward of renunciation is some good greater than the thing renounced. To renounce with no vision of such a good, from fear or in automatic obedience to a formula, is to weaken the springs of life, and to diminish the soul's resistance to this world.

Through practice comes Yoga, through Yoga comes knowledge, through knowledge love, and through love bliss.

Reverence makes it possible to be whole, though ignorant. It is the wholeness of understanding.

The only power a god can teach is the power of doing without happiness.

Enlightenment is the only real antidote to the world's despair.