My principal anguish, and the wellspring of all my joys and sorrows, has been the incessant merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the struggle between our higher aspirations (spirit) and base desires (flesh). It highlights how this internal conflict shapes our emotional experiences.
In this quote, Kazantzakis speaks to the ongoing tension between the spiritual and physical aspects of human existence. He suggests that the clash between our lofty ideals and earthly desires is both a source of deep suffering and profound joy, shaping our life's narrative and emotional landscape. This duality is fundamental to understanding the human condition, as it drives our pursuits and experiences.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about overcoming personal struggles.
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.
Progress without the reasoned freedom to think and act is regression to slavery.
Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.
The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.
The quality of the will to power is, precisely, growth. Achievement is its cancellation. To be, the will to power must increase with each fulfillment, making the fulfillment only a step to a further one. The vaster the power gained the vaster the appetite for more.
For every life and every act consequence of good and evil can be shown and as in time results of many deeds are blended so good and evil in the end become confounded.
The lie was dead And damned, and truth stood up instead.
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