9 Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes on Psychology

Nikos Kazantzakis quotes on psychology

4. There's a devil inside me which cries, 'You're not the son of the Carpenter, you're the son of King David! You are not a man, you are the Son of man whom Daniel prophesied.' And still more: 'The Son of God! And still more: God!'

12. A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.

23. 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.

33. 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.

38. 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.

40. 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.

44. You are not a miserable and momentary body; behind your fleeting mask of clay, a thousand-year-old face lies in ambush. Your passions and your thoughts are older than your heart or brain.

102. With silent strides Odysseus then shot back the bolt, passed lightly through the courtyard and sped down the street. Some saw him take the graveyard's zigzag mountain path, some saw him leap on rocks that edged the savage shore, some visionaries saw him in the dead of night swimming and talking secretly with the sea-demons, but only a small boy saw him in a lonely dream sit crouched and weeping by the dark sea's foaming edge.

103. 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!