It is not you talking, but innumerable ancestors talking with…

It is not you talking, but innumerable ancestors talking with your mouth. It is not you who desire, but innumerable generations of descendants longing with your heart.
Your dead do not lie in the ground. They have become birds, trees, air. You sit under their shade, you are nourished by their flesh, you inhale their breathing. They have become ideas and passions, they determine your will and your actions.
Future generations do not move far from you in an uncertain time. They live, desire, and act in your loins and your heart.
In this lightning moment when you walk the earth, your first duty, by enlarging your ego, is to live through the endless march, both visible and invisible, of your own being.

Sourced, The Saviors of God (1923)

Other Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes

Every man worthy of being called a son of man bears his cross and mounts his Golgotha. Many, indeed most, reach the first or second step, collapse pantingly in the middle of the journey, and do not attain the summit of Golgotha, in other words the summit of their duty: to be crucified, resurrected, and to save theirs souls. Afraid of crucifixion, they grow fainthearted; they do not know that the cross is the only path to resurrection. There is no other path. - View Quote Details on Every man worthy of being called a son of man…
The ultimate most holy form of theory is action.
Not to look on passively while the spark leaps from generation to generation, but to leap and to burn with it! - View Quote Details on The ultimate most holy form of theory is action…
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…
The wife of my God is matter; they wrestle with each other, they laugh and weep, they cry out in the nuptial bed of flesh.
They spawn and are dismembered. They fill sea, land, and air with species of plants, animals, men, and spirits. This primordial pair embraces, is dismembered, and multiplies in every living creature.
All the concentrated agony of the Universe bursts out in every living thing. God is imperiled in the sweet ecstasy and bitterness of flesh.
But he shakes himself free, he leaps out of brains and loins, then clings to new brains and new loins until the struggle for liberation again breaks out from the beginning. - View Quote Details on The wife of my God is matter; they wrestle with…
In religions which have lost their creative spark, the gods eventually become no more than poetic motifs or ornaments for decorating human solitude and walls. - View Quote Details on In religions which have lost their creative spark, the gods…
Your first duty, in completing your service to your race, is to feel within you all your ancestors. Your second duty is to throw light on their onrush and to continue their work. Your third duty is to pass on to your son the great mandate to surpass you. - View Quote Details on Your first duty, in completing your service to your race,…
Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive. - View Quote Details on Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it…
May he be cursed on earth who gives his trust to virtue,
that bankrupt crone who takes our life’s pure gold and gives
but bad receipts for payment in the lower world.
Ah, passers-by that stroll, travelers that come and go,
all that I had, I placed on virtue, and lost the game! - View Quote Details on May he be cursed on earth who gives his trust…
The essence of our God is obscure. It ripens continuously; perhaps victory is strenghened with our every valorous deed, but perhaps even all these agonizing struggles toward deliverance and victory are inferior to the nature of divinity.
Whatever it might be, we fight on without certainty, and our virtue, uncertain of any rewards, acquires a profound nobility. - View Quote Details on The essence of our God is obscure. It ripens continuously;…
Who holds a sword is tempted, who has youth must play,
he who does not fear death on earth does not fear God. - View Quote Details on Who holds a sword is tempted, who has youth must…