All those who actually live the mysteries of life haven't the time to write, and all those who have the time don't live them! D'you see?
Interpretation
Life's true mysteries are best experienced rather than documented, as those who deeply live them are too engaged to write about them.
In this quote, Nikos Kazantzakis highlights the paradox of life where those who truly understand and embody the complexities and wonders of existence are often too busy living in the moment to put those experiences into words. Conversely, those who might have the time to reflect and write about life often lack the depth of experience needed to convey its mysteries fully. This suggests a tension between experiential knowledge and intellectual contemplation.
In practice
During a commencement speech to emphasize the importance of experience over mere academic achievement.
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.
This, I thought, is how great visionaries and poets see everything- as if for the first time. Each morning they see a new world before their eyes; they do not really see it, they create it.
What happiness this is: to fly, skimming over the earth just as we do in our dreams! Life has become a dream. Can this be the meaning of paradise?
I collect my tools: sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, intellect. Night has fallen.
The dual substance of Christ - the yearning, so human, so superhuman, of man to attain God. [...] has always been a deep inscrutable mystery to me. [...] My principle anguish and source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh. [...] And my soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met.
I fight to embrace the entire circle of human activity to the full extent of my ability.
I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.
Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused of being a little too phlegmatic.
When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.
You either have commercial pressure or ideological pressure. I prefer commercial pressure; otherwise, you can be at the mercy of one or two idiots.
I do not understand the capricious lewdness of the sleeping mind.
It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me.
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