Quote #29

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!'

More from Nikos Kazantzakis

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  2. This is the moment of greatest crisis. This is the signal for the March to begin. If you do not hear this Cry tearing at your entrails, do …
  3. Nothing exists! Neither life nor death. I watch mind and matter hunting each other like two nonexistent erotic phantasms - merging, begetti…
  4. Which of the two eternal roads shall I choose? Suddenly I know that my whole life hangs on this decision - the life of the entire Universe.…
  5. I surrender myself to everything. I love, I feel pain, I struggle. The world seems to me wider than the mind, my heart a dark and almighty …
  6. Someone within me is struggling to lift a great weight, to cast off the mind and flesh by overcoming habit, laziness, necessity. I do not k…
  7. Where are we going? Do not ask! Ascend, descend. There is no beginning and no end. Only this present moment exists, full of bitterness, ful…
  8. I am not the light, I am the night; but a flame stabs through my entrails and consumes me. I am the night devoured by light.

All Nikos Kazantzakis quotes