But we, O blockhead, with dogged spite and armored love shall…

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!

Sourced, The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel
(1938)

Odysseus to Kentaur, Book VIII, line 829

Other Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes

Profound and incommensurable is the worth of this flowing world: God clings to it and ascends, God feeds upon it and increases. - View Quote Details on Profound and incommensurable is the worth of this flowing world:…
There is only one woman in the world. One woman, with many faces. - View Quote Details on There is only one woman in the world. One woman,…
We do not struggle for ourselves, nor for our race, not even for humanity.
We do not struggle for Earth, nor for ideas. All these are the precious yet provisional stairs of our ascending God, and they crumble away as soon as he steps upon them in his ascent.
In the smallest lightning flash of our lives, we feel all of God treading upon us, and suddenly we understand: if we all desire it intensely, if we organize all the visible and invisible powers of earth and fling them upward, if we all battle together like fellow combatants eternally vigilant — then the Universe might possibly be saved.
It is not God who will save us — it is we who will save God, by battling, by creating, and by transmuting matter into spirit. - View Quote Details on We do not struggle for ourselves, nor for our race,…
All this world, all this rich, endless flow of appearances is not a deception, a multicolored phantasmagoria of our mirroring mind. Nor is it absolute reality which lives and evolves freely, independent of our mind’s power.
It is not the resplendent robe which arrays the mystic body of God. Nor the obscurely translucent partition between man and mystery.
All this world that we see, hear, and touch is that accessible to the human senses, a condensation of the two enormous powers of the Universe permeated with all of God. - View Quote Details on All this world, all this rich, endless flow of appearances…
A slave’s soul has no worth, my brothers; it lacks strength
to tread on this great earth with gallantry and freedom.
I pity the poor slaves, they’re nought but airy mist,
a light breeze scatters them, a fragrance knocks them down;
it’s only just they crawl on the earth on hands and knees.
Today I’ll write a hymn to God and pray for this great grace. - View Quote Details on A slave’s soul has no worth, my brothers; it lacks…
Descend you weary-laden, descend in the dark earth,
help me to finish swiftly my dread master’s shroud,
let each hem hold my pain, each corner hide a crow,
a lean, voracious crow to peck his heart out bit by bit. - View Quote Details on Descend you weary-laden, descend in the dark earth,
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Only now, as we feel the onslaught behind us, do we begin dimly to apprehend why the animals fought, begot, and died; and behind them the plants; and behind these the huge reserve of inorganic forces.
We are moved by pity, gratitude, and esteem for our old comrades-in-arms. They toiled, loved, and died to open a road for our coming.
We also toil with the same delight, agony, and exaltation for the sake of Someone Else who with every courageous deed of ours proceeds one step farther.
All our struggle once more will have a purpose much greater than we, wherein our toils, our miseries, and our crimes will have become useful and holy. - View Quote Details on Only now, as we feel the onslaught behind us, do…
You are not free. Myriad invisible hands hold your hands and direct them. When you rise in anger, a great-grandfather froths at your mouth; when you make love, an ancestral caveman growls with lust; when you sleep, tombs open in your memory till your skull brims with ghosts. - View Quote Details on You are not free. Myriad invisible hands hold your hands…
It is not you talking. Nor is it your race only which shouts within you, for all the innumerable races of mankind shout and rush within you: white, yellow, black.
Free yourself from race also; fight to live through the whole struggle of man. - View Quote Details on It is not you talking. Nor is it your race…
A woman’s body is a dark and monstrous mystery;
between her supple thighs a heavy whirlpool swirls,
two rivers crash, and woe to him who slips and falls! - View Quote Details on A woman’s body is a dark and monstrous mystery;
between her…