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!
Interpretation
The quote reflects a struggle between the love for life and the distractions of written words.
In this quote, Nikos Kazantzakis expresses a profound conflict between his deep appreciation for the vibrancy of life and the time spent immersed in the trivialities of literature and mundane writings. It highlights how one can become ensnared by the written word, neglecting the richness of real-life experiences, suggesting that sometimes our intellectual pursuits can lead us away from fully engaging with the world around us.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about how reading can sometimes distract us from real-world experiences.
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.
Once I got into space, I was feeling very comfortable in the universe. I felt like I had a right to be anywhere in this universe, that I belonged here as much as any speck of stardust, any comet, any planet.
The sun too penetrates into privies, but is not polluted by them.
Once you understand that Goliath is much weaker than you think he is, and David has superior technology, then you say: why do we tell the story the way we do? It becomes, actually, a far more meaningful and important story in its retelling than in the kind of unsophisticated way we've done it for, I think, too long.
Philosophy begins where religion ends, just as by analogy chemistry begins where alchemy runs out, and astronomy takes the place of astrology.
Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life.
It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own badness, which is indeed possible, but to fly from other men's badness, which is impossible.
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