We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.
Interpretation
Life is a brief experience between two voids, emphasizing its transient beauty.
Nikos Kazantzakis' quote reflects on the nature of existence, suggesting that life is a fleeting moment of brightness amidst the darkness of before and after. It invites a contemplation of life as a precious, luminous interval that deserves appreciation in contrast to the inevitability of life's end and the origins that remain shrouded in mystery.
In practice
In a motivational speech about appreciating the moment, this quote can inspire the audience to cherish their 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.
The very ritual practices that the New Atheists dismiss as costly, inefficient and irrational turn out to be a solution to one of the hardest problems humans face: cooperation without kinship
Unless man is committed to the belief that all mankind are his brothers, then he labors in vain and hypocritically in the vineyards of equality.
The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our common doom.
I've never allowed my political life, or my life as a basketball player, to define the totality of my humanity or my personality.
If Christians should vote their duty to God at the polls, they would carry every election, and do it with ease. They would elect every clean candidate in the United States, and defeat every soiled one. Their prodigious power would be quickly realized and recognized, and afterward there would be no unclean candidates upon any ticket, and graft would cease.
Nothing in the world is permanent, and weβre foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely weβre still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.