I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.
If a woman sleeps alone it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart, but there is one sin He will not forgive. If a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.
How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. . . . All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.
Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards.
Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.
True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create theirown.
How could I, who loved life so intensely, have let myself be entangled for so long in that balderdash of books and paper blackened with ink!
My soul comes from better worlds and I have an incurable homesickness of the stars.
It is impossible for me to remember how many days or weeks went by in this way. Time is round, and it rolls quickly.
Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all, in my view, is not to have one.
I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!” – The Narrator.
You know all about love, but that is not enough. You must also learn that hate comes from God as well, that it too is in the Lord’s service. And in times like these, with the world fallen to the state it has, hate serves God more than love.
Never in my life had I felt so tangibly and with such astonishment that hate, by passing successively through comprehension, mercy, and sympathy, can be transformed into love.
The human soul is heavy, clumsy, held in the mud of the flesh. Its perceptions are still coarse and brutish. It can divine nothing clearly, nothing with certainty.
Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are. Some turn their food into fat and manure, some into work and good humor, and others, I’m told, into God.” – Zorba.
Luck is blind, they say. It can’t see where it’s going and keeps running into people…and the people it knocks into we call lucky! Well, to hell with luck if it’s like that, I say!
The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical.
But then I was young, and to be young means to undertake to demolish the world and to have the gall to wish to erect a new and better one in its place.
Happy the youth who believes that his duty is to remake the world and bring it more in accord with virtue and justice, more in accord with his own heart. Woe to whoever commences his life without lunacy.
When you’ve made up your mind, no use lagging behind, go ahead and no relenting,Let your youth have free reign, it won’t come again, so be bold and no repenting.
To think things out properly and fairly, a fellow’s got to be calm and old and toothless: When you’re an old gaffer with no teeth, it’s easy to say: ‘Damn it, boys, you mustn’t bite!’ But, when you’ve got all thirty-two teeth…
When everyone drowns and I’m the only one to escape, God is protecting me. When everyone else is saved and I’m the only one to drown, God is protecting me then too.
You have everything but one thing: madness. A man needs a little madness or else – he never dares cut the rope and be free.
Madness, Brother Masseo, is the salt which prevents good sense from rotting.
But how can anyone put a bridle on man’s vanity and arrogance? But how can Purity walk the earth without covering her feet with mud?
It’s possible to save oneself from Satan, Father Francis, but from men—never!
Every perfect traveller always creates the country where he travels.
I said to the almond tree, ‘Friend, speak to me of God,’ and the almond tree blossomed.
The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.
My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry.
Happiness is a simple everyday miracle, like water, and we are not aware of it.
While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realise – sometimes with astonishment – how happy we had been.
Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are. Some turn their food into fat and manure, some into work and good humour, and others, I’m told, into God. So there must be three sorts of men.
I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge or Virtue or Goodness or Victory but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!
When everything goes wrong, what a joy to test your soul and see if it has endurance and courage. An invisible and all-powerful enemy – some call him God, others the Devil, seem to rush upon us to destroy us; but we are not destroyed.
Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive.
In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.
Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.