Nikos Kazantzakis Quotes

The least flower, with brimming cup, may stand and share its dew drop with another near.

There are six senses: five are outer; they tell you about the world. I say something about the light; without eyes you will not know light. Ears say something about the sound; without ears you will not know anything about the sound. There is a sixth sense, the inner sense, that shows and tells you something about yourself and the ultimate source of things. That sense has to be discovered. Meditation is nothing but the discovery of the inner sense.

The landscape thinks itself in me and I am its consciousness.

We have to look deeply at things in order to see. When a swimmer enjoys the clear water of the river, he or she should also be able to be the river.

As we grow in our consciousness, there will be more compassion and more love, and then the barriers between people, between religions, between nations will begin to fall. Yes, we have to beat down the separateness.

Momo listened to everyone and everything - even to the rain and the wind and the pine trees - and all of them spoke to her after their own fashion.

What's natural and right is to go with the energy of how it all has to work together. What's natural and right is interconnectedness, not individualism. What is natural and right is respect for the system, not killing the system. What's natural and right is love.

When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us.

I hope my music can help many nations all over the world see that the true things come out of the earth, and then they go back into the earth. But the true love you have to find within yourself and learn to respect one another from nation to nation.

What the warrior renounces is anything in his experience that is a barrier between himself and others. In other words, renunciation is making yourself more available, more gentle and open to others.

I don't like the word transparency; cold dead glass is transparent. I prefer education or understanding, which are more human.

All flowers talk to me and so do hundreds of little living things in the woods. I learn what I know by watching and loving everything.

Here, fire turns into water; Here, the dancing of the rain declares the sun. There's no opposition in existence, no contradiction; Everything supports everything else.

Your fervent wishes can only find fulfillment if you succeed in attaining love and understanding of men, and animals, and plants, and stars, so that every joy becomes your joy and every pain your pain.

To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world.

Have you ever watched the jet cars race on the boulevard?...I sometimes think drivers don’t know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly...If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! He'd say, that’s grass! A pink blur! That’s a rose garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows.

Verses are not, as people think, feelings (those one has early enough) -- they are experiences. For the sake of a verse one must see many cities, men, and things, one must know the animals feel how birds fly, and know the gesture with which the little flowers open in the morning.

Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity.

You are Life passing through your body, passing through your mind, passing through your soul. Once you find that out, not with logic, not with the intellect, but because you can feel that Life-you find out that you are the force that makes the flowers open and close, that makes the hummingbird fly from flower to flower. You find out that you are in every tree, and you are in every animal, vegetable, and rock. You are that force that moves the wind and breathes through your body. The whole universe is a living being that is moved by that force, and that is what you are. You are Life.

All man has to do is cooperate with the big forces, the sun, the rain, the growing urge. Seeds sprout, stems grow, leaves spread in the sunlight. Man plants, weeds, cultivates and harvests. It sounds simple, and it is simple, with the simplicity of great truths.

We may learn anew what compassion and beauty are, and pause to listen to the Earth's music.

A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you do not therefore own her, as you do not own the rain, or the trees, or the laws which pertain to them ... A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing. . .

Talk to the tree, make friends with it.

When you are with a landscape or a human being where there is no need to speak, but simply to listen, to perceive, to feel.

In truth we gaze but do not see, and hearken but do not hear; we eat and drink but do not taste. And there lies the difference between Jesus of Nazareth and ourselves. His senses were all continually made new, and the world to Him was always a new world.