Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes

The inner life must overcome the flesh or the flesh will overcome and destroy the inner life.

Every time the enemy throws us off our guard, and we give way to temptation, he gains so much; he weakens us and strengthens himself; when we resist temptation, it strengthens the Saints and weakens the enemy.

I always intended the title, 'WARRIOR,' to be about spiritual warfare and warrior lives outside of the cage.

Christianity is a battle not a dream.

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

The struggle between God and man breaks out in everyone, together with the longing for reconciliation... God does not love weak souls and flabby flesh. The spirit desires to wrestle with flesh which is strong and full of resistance. It is a carnivorous bird which is incessantly hungry; it eats flesh and, by assimilating it, makes it disappear.

My life is such a contradiction. My soul yearns for holiness and then runs from the mortification necessary to attain it.

The struggle between God and man breaks out in everyone, together with the longing for reconciliation. Most often this struggle is unconscious and short-lived. A weak soul does not have the endurance to resist the flesh for very long. It grows heavy, becomes flesh itself, and the contest ends. But among responsible men, men who keep their eyes riveted day and night upon the Supreme Duty, the conflict between flesh and spirit breaks out mercilessly and may last until death.

God is in my head, but the devil is in my pants.

The ordinary man is ruined by the flesh lusting against the spirit; the scholar by the spirit lusting too much against the flesh.

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.

I am of a different mind ten times in the course of a day. But I resist the devil, and often it is with a fart that I chase him away. When he tempts me with silly sins I say, 'Devil, yesterday I broke wind too. Have you written it down on your list?

The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak.

Praying and sinning will never live together in the same heart. Prayer will consume sin, or sin will choke prayer.

If thou wouldst conquer thy weakness, thou must never gratify it. No man is compelled to evil: his consent only makes it his. It is no sin to be tempted, but to be overcome.

Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you; it is your murderer, and the murderer of the world: use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used. Kill it before it kills you.

It makes me happier, more secure, to think that I do not have to plan and manage everything for myself, that I am only a sword made sharp to smite the unclean forces, an enchanted sword to cleave and disperse them. Grant, O Lord, that I may not break as I strike! Let me not fall from Thy hand!

My temptations have been my Masters of Divinity.

Temptation does not make the sin, it lies ready in the heart.

The Devil is easy to identify. He appears when you're terribly tired and makes a very reasonable request which you know you shouldn't grant.

We want to stay on the straight and narrow path and serve God, yet we continue a practice that often pulls us in the wrong direction.

Therefore tremble, O man, at any power thou hast, except thou usest it for God. Art thou strong in body; who hath thy strength? God, or thy lusts?

Let no man pretend to fear sin that does not fear temptation also! These two are too closely united to be separated. He does not truly hate the fruit who delights in the root.

I called out to God, but the devil keeps answering.

I've got evil in me as much as anyone, some desires that scare me. Even if I don't give in to them, just having them scares the living bejesus out of me sometimes. I'm no saint, the way you kid about. But I've always walked the line, walked that goddamned line. It's a mean mother of a line, straight and narrow, sharp as a razor, cuts right into you when you walk it long enough. You're always bleeding on that line, and sometimes you wonder why you don't just step off and walk in the cool grass.