Nikos Kazantzakis - Hope Quotes

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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. This is what I want. I want nothing more. I have been seeking freedom.

Nikos Kazantzakis

I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free. inscription on Kazantakis's tomb in Heraklion, Greece

Nikos Kazantzakis

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

Within this arena, which grows more stable night after day, generations work and love and hope and vanish. New generations tread on the corpses of their fathers, continue the work above the abyss and struggle to tame the dread mystery. How? By cultivating a single field, by kissing a woman, by studying a stone, an animal, an idea.

Nikos Kazantzakis

"Do not die that we may not die," the dead cry out within you. "We had no time to enjoy the women we desired; be in time, sleep with them! We had no time to turn our thoughts into deeds; turn them into deeds! We had no time to grasp and to crystallize the face of our hope; make it firm!" …
But you must choose with care whom to hurl down again into the chasms of your blood, and whom you shall permit to mount once more into the light and the earth.

Nikos Kazantzakis

I am not alone in my fear, nor alone in my hope, nor alone in my shouting. A tremendous host, an onrush of the Universe fears, hopes, and shouts with me.
I am an improvised bridge, and when Someone passes over me, I crumble away behind Him.
Second Step: The Race

Nikos Kazantzakis

But we, O blockhead, with dogged spite and armored love
shall force those deaf dark powers to grow ears and hear us!
I know that God is earless, eyeless, and heartless too,
a brainless Dragon Worm that crawls on earth and hopes
in anguish and then in secret that we'll give him soul,
for then he, too, may sprout ears, eyes, to match his growth,
but God is clay in my ten fingers, and I mould him!

Nikos Kazantzakis

Thus night with all her snares passed through the upper world
and baited all heads sweetly, fed all foolish hopes,
for night can bring to men all shrewish day denies,
wrapped as a gift in the green leaves of opiate dream.

Nikos Kazantzakis

Comrades, I've voyaged long and far on sea and soul,
my eyes have seen disease, gods, ghosts, and men, and yet
in no land have I seen a more false, murderous siren
than that wind-headed, babbling, blind bitch-hound called Hope!

Nikos Kazantzakis

This ultimate stage of our spiritual exercise is called Silence. Not because its contents are the ultimate inexpressible despair or the ultimate inexpressible joy and hope. Nor because it is the ultimate knowledge which does not condescend to speak, or the ultimate ignorance which cannot.
Silence means: Every person, after completing his service in all labors, reaches finally the highest summit of endeavor, beyond every labor, where he no longer struggles or shouts, where he ripens fully in silence, indestructibly, eternally, with the entire Universe.

Nikos Kazantzakis

Behind the stream of my mind and body, behind the stream of my race and all mankind, behind the stream of plants and animals, I watch with trembling the Invisible, treading on all visible things and ascending.
Behind his heavy and blood-splattered feet I hear all living things being trampled on and crushed.
His face is without laughter, dark and silent, beyond joy and sorrow, beyond hope.

Nikos Kazantzakis

Blessed are those eyes that have seen more water than any man!
Blessed be that haughty mind that aimed at the greatest hope!
May you be blessed who row the current your life long
and now with dry unfreshened lips descend to Hades
to find the hidden deathless springs and slake your thirst!
My son, it's death who keeps and pours the deathless waters.

Nikos Kazantzakis

All hopes and despairs vanish in the voracious, funneling whirlwind of God.

Nikos Kazantzakis

The Cry within me is a call to arms. It shouts: "I, the Cry, am the Lord your God! I am not an asylum. I am not hope and a home. I am not the Father nor the Son nor the Holy Ghost. I am your General!
"You are not my slave, nor a plaything in my hands. You are not my friend, you are not my child. You are my comrade-in-arms!
"Hold courageously the passes which I entrusted to you; do not betray them. You are in duty bound, and you may act heroically by remaining at your own battle station.
"Love danger. What is most difficult? That is what I want! Which road should you take? The most craggy ascent! It is the one I also take: follow me!

Nikos Kazantzakis

God confronts me with terror and love — for I am His only hope — and says: "This Ecstatic, who gives birth to all things, who rejoices in them all and yet destroys them, this Ecstatic is my Son!"
The Action : The Relationship Between God and Man

Nikos Kazantzakis

Pain is not the only essence of our God, nor is hope in a future life or a life on this earth, neither joy nor victory. Every religion that holds up to worship one of these primordial aspects of God narrows our hearts and our minds.
The essence of our God is STRUGGLE. Pain, joy, and hope unfold and labor within this struggle, world without end.

Nikos Kazantzakis

The moment is ripe: leave the heart and the mind behind you, go forward, take the third step.
Free yourself from the simple complacency of the mind that thinks to put all things in order and hopes to subdue phenomena. Free yourself from the terror of the heart that seeks and hopes to find the essence of things.
Conquer the last, the greatest temptation of all: Hope. This is the third duty.

Nikos Kazantzakis

We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this circle God. We might have given it any other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence.
But we have named it God because only this name, for primordial reasons, can stir our hearts profoundly. And this deeply felt emotion is indispensable if we are to touch, body with body, the dread essence beyond logic.
Within this gigantic circle of divinity we are in duty bound to separate and perceive clearly the small, burning arc of our epoch.

Nikos Kazantzakis

From every joy and pain a hope leaps out eternally to escape this pain and to widen joy.
And again the ascent begins — which is pain — and joy is reborn and new hope springs up once more. The circle never closes. It is not a circle, but a spiral which ascends eternally, ever widening, enfolding and unfolding the triune struggle.

Nikos Kazantzakis