You can knock on a deaf man’s door forever.

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.

What do you have to fear? Nothing. Whom do you have to fear? No one. Why? Because whoever has joined forces with God obtains three great privileges: omnipotence without power, intoxication without wine, and life...

Oh, how crafty of religion, I cried out indignantly, to transplant rewards and punishments into a future life in order to comfort cowards and the enslaved and aggrieved, enabling them to bow their necks patiently...

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,...

Because what God wants, that, and only that, is also what we want—but we don’t know it. God comes and awakens our souls, revealing to them their real, though unknown, desire. This is the secret,...

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.

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...

The creator wrestles with a hard, invisible substance, a substance far superior to him. Even the greatest victor emerges vanquished, because our deepest secret, the only one that deserves expression, always remains unexpressed. This secret...

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?

I should learn to run, to wrestle, to swim, to ride horses, to row, to drive a car, to fire a rifle. I should fill my soul with flesh. I should fill my flesh with...

The unfailing rhythm of the seasons, the ever-turning wheel of life, the four facets of the earth which are lit in turn by the sun, the passing of life–all these filled me once more with...

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...

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.

How ought we to love God, Father?” he asked in a whisper.”By loving men, my son””And how ought we to love men?” “By trying to guide them along the right path””And what is the right...

Thy designs are a bottomless pit. How can I descend into this pit to examine it? Thou lookest thousands of years into the future and then Thou judgest. What today seems an injustice to man’s...

I felt sorry for the inhabitants and went into the forest to admonish the wolf in God’s name not to eat any more sheep. I called him, he came—and do you know what his answer...

It was certainly not this mummified and outrageously painted old woman he was seeing before him, but the entire “female species,” as it was his custom to call women. The individual disappeared, the features were...

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 order to mount to heaven, you used the Inferno to give you momentum. “The further down you gain your momentum,” you often used to tell me, “the higher you shall be able to reach....

Beauty always had a purpose: to be of service to life.

I did not know what I was going to do with my life; before anything else I wanted to find an answer, my answer, to the timeless questions, and then after that I would decide...

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 route, Sior Francis—and don’t be surprised when you hear it—my route when I set out to find God… was… laziness. Yes, laziness. If I wasn’t lazy I would have gone the way of respectable,...

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...

The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical.

By means of poetry all this suffering and effort could be transformed into dream; no matter how much of the ephemeral existed, poetry could immortalize it by turning it into song. Only two or three...

Every integral man has inside him, in his heart of hearts, a mystic center around which all else revolves. This mystic whirling lends unity to his thoughts and actions; it helps him find or invent...

With the passage of days in this godly isolation [desert], my heart grew calm. It seemed to fill with answers. I did not ask questions any more; I was certain. Everything – where we came...

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.

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!

What first truly stirred my soul was not fear or pain, nor was it pleasure or games; it was the yearning for freedom. I had to gain freedom – but from what, from whom? Little...

It is impossible for me to remember how many days or weeks went by in this way. Time is round, and it rolls quickly.

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...

You will, Judas, my brother. God will give you the strength, as much as you lack, because it is necessary—it is necessary for me to be killed and for you to betray me. We two...

Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery? To sacrifice oneself to an idea, to a race, to God? Or does...

…Man’s heart is a ditch full of blood. The loved ones who have died throw themselves down on the bank of this ditch to drink the blood and so come to life again; the dearer...

Life’s true face is the skull.

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.

Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.

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!’...

We are to blame if reality does not take the form we desire. Whatever we have not desired with sufficient strength, that we call nonexistent. Desire it, imbrue it with your blood, your sweat, your...

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.

No. I don’t believe in anything. How many times must I tell you that? I don’t believe in anything anyone; only in Zorba. Not because Zorba is better than the others; not at all, not...

If they were to ask me what road leads to heaven, I would answer them: the most difficult!

Man hurries, God does not. That is why man’s works are uncertain and maimed, while God’s are flawless and sure. My eyes welling with tears, I vowed never to transgress this eternal law again. Like...

La mia anima viene da mondi migliori ed ho un’inguaribile nostalgia delle stelle.

Forgetting himself for a moment, Francis brought his hand out from under his frock in order to bless the multitude. When the people saw his wound they bellowed madly. The women dashed forward with mantles...

Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all, in my view, is not to have one.

Und das Licht hat geschworen, nicht aufzugeben, aber es weiß, das es keine Rettung gibt, es wird sich nicht ergeben, es erlischt.