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Zorba the Greek QUOTES

Zorba the Greek QUOTES

1 " 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. "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

2 " You can knock on a deaf man's door forever. "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

3 " 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. "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

4 " 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! "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

5 " 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 soul. In fact, I should reconcile at last within me the two internal antagonists. "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

6 " An ardent desire to go took possession of me once more. Not because I wanted to leave - I was quite all right on this Cretan coast, and felt happy and free there and I needed nothing - but because I have always been consumed with one desire; to touch and see as much as possible of the earth and the sea before I die. "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

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

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

8 " 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 a little bit! He's a brute like the rest! But I believe in Zorba because he's the only being I have in my power, the only one I know. All the rest are guts. All the rest are ghosts, I tell you. When I die, everything'll die. The whole Zorbatic world will go to the bottom! "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

9 " 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. "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

10 " 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. "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

11 " 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. So there must be three sorts of men. I'm not one of the worst, boss, nor yet one of the best. I'm somewhere in between the two. What I eat I turn into work and good humor. That's not too bad, after all!'

He looked at me wickedly and started laughing.

'As for you, boss,' he said, 'I think you do your level best to turn what you eat into God. But you can't quite manage it, and that torments you. The same thing's happening to you as happened to the crow.'

'What happened to the crow, Zorba?'

'Well, you see, he used to walk respectably, properly - well, like a crow. But one day he got it into his head to try and strut about like a pigeon. And from that time on the poor fellow couldn't for the life of him recall his own way of walking. He was all mixed up, don't you see? He just hobbled about. "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

12 " 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! "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

13 " 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. "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

14 " 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 it mean that the higher the model the longer the tether of our slavery? Then we can enjoy ourselves and frolic in a more spacious arena and die without having come to the end of the tether. Is that, then, what we call liberty? "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

15 " …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 they are to you, the more of your blood they drink.” - The Narrator. "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

16 " Christ is born, my wise Solomon, my wretched pen-pusher! Don´t go picking things over with a needle! Is He born or isn´t He? Of course He is born, don´t be daft. If you take a magnifying glass and look at your drinking water-an engineer told me this, one day – you´ll see, he said, the water´s full of little worms you couldn´t see with your naked eye. You´ll see the worms and you won´t drink. You won´t drink and you´ll curl up with thirst. Smash your glass, boss, and the little worms´ll vanish and you can drink and be refreshed! "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

17 " 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... "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

18 " You have everything but one thing: madness. A man needs a little madness or else - he never dares cut the rope and be free. "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

19 " Leave nothing for death but a burned-out castle "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek

20 " God enjoys himself, kills, commits injustice, makes love, works, likes impossible things, just the same as I do.

But, boss, I´ve said so before, and I say it again, God and the devil are one and the same thing! "

― Nikos Kazantzakis , Zorba the Greek