Speak straight and clear! I only hear that manly prayer which…

Speak straight and clear! I only hear that manly prayer
which like a huge fist breaks my head against the stones.

Sourced, The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel
(1938)

Odysseus, Book VIII, line 530

Other Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes

Amidst our greatest happiness someone within us cries out: “I am in pain! I want to escape your happiness! I am stifling!”
Amidst our deepest despair someone within us cries out: “I do not despair! I fight on! I grasp at your head, I unsheathe myself from your body, I detach myself from the earth, I cannot be contained in brains, in names, in deeds!” - View Quote Details on Amidst our greatest happiness someone within us cries out: “I…
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. - View Quote Details on Pain is not the only essence of our God, nor…
High up where the poor sat, the people quaked with fear:
they saw the soul stretched on the ground, a votive beast
beaten by the conflicting powers of light and dark,
and their minds shook, nor knew now what great god to choose,
for comfort’s road dropped to the right, the rough ascent
rose to the left, and both roads seemed to lead to God,
while at the crossroads stood the human heart, and swayed. - View Quote Details on High up where the poor sat, the people quaked with…
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:…
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…
Having seen that I was not capable of using all my resources in political action, I returned to my literary activity. There lay the the battlefield suited to my temperament. I wanted to make my novels the extension of my own father’s struggle for liberty. But gradually, as I kept deepening my responsibility as a writer, the human problem came to overshadow political and social questions. All the political, social, and economic improvements, all the technical progress cannot have any regenerating significance, so long as our inner life remains as it is at present. The more the intelligence unveils and violates the secrets of Nature, the more the danger increases and the heart shrinks. - View Quote Details on Having seen that I was not capable of using all…
“Fire is the first and final mask of my God. We dance and weep between two enormous pyres.”
Our thoughts and our bodies flash and glitter with reflected light. Between the two pyres I stand serenely, my brain unshaken amid the vertigo, and I say:
“Time is most short and space most narrow between these two pyres, the rhythm of this life is most sluggish, and I have no time, nor a place to dance in. I cannot wait.”
Then all at once the rhythm of the earth becomes a vertigo, time disappears, the moment whirls, becomes eternity, and every point in space — insect or star or idea — turns into dance. - View Quote Details on “Fire is the first and final mask of my God…
My entire soul is a cry, and all my work the commentary on that cry. - View Quote Details on My entire soul is a cry, and all my work…
If you are a man of learning, fight in the skull, kill ideas and create new ones. God hides in every idea as in every cell of flesh. Smash the idea, set him free! Give him another, a more spacious idea in which to dwell. - View Quote Details on If you are a man of learning, fight in the…
I hold the brimming wineglass and relive the toils of my grandfathers and great-grandfathers. The sweat of my labor runs down like a fountain from my tall, intoxicated brow.
I am a sack filled with meat and bones, blood, sweat, and tears, desires and visions. - View Quote Details on I hold the brimming wineglass and relive the toils of…