I knew that no matter what door you knock on in a Cretan village, it will be opened for you. A meal will be served in your honor, and you will sleep between the best sheets in the house. In Crete, the stranger is still the unknown god. Before him, all doors and all hearts are opened.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the hospitality and generosity typically shown to strangers in Cretan culture.
Nikos Kazantzakis highlights the deep-rooted tradition of hospitality in Crete, where every stranger is treated with reverence and kindness, almost as if they are a divine figure. This reflects a cultural ideal that values openness and generosity, creating a welcoming atmosphere that fosters connections between people.
In practice
Using the quote during a cultural exchange program to emphasize the importance of hospitality.
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.
He had learned long ago that, in general, the easier it was for anxious patients to reach him, the less likely they were to call. (107)
JACK Your duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNON My duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.
All my life, I've stayed at parties too long because I didn't know when to go.
Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is.
Nearly forty years ago, a distinguished Prime Minister of this country ... said, 'They may not be angels but they are at least our friends.'* I must say that I do not think that we probably demonstrated in that forty years that we are angels yet, but I hope we have demonstrated that we are at least friends.
If conversation was the lyrics, laughter was the music, making time spent together a melody that could be replayed over and over without getting stale.
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