82 quotes
Crocodiles sweetly shut their lidded eyes, and yawned,
for the blond meat had been quite good, and in slow rains
new flesh would sprout once more and then be munched anew.
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938)
Her green eyes fluttered swiftly twice or thrice, then glazed,
her mouth gaped open, bleating, then her jaws hung loose
and retched up all her soul in lumps of clotting blood.
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938)
Every word is an adamantine shell which encloses a great explosive force. To discover its meaning you must let it burst inside you like a bomb and in this way liberate the soul which it imprisons.
Report to Greco (1965)
But we, O blockhead, with dogged spite and armored love
shall force those deaf dark powers to grow ears and hear us!
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938)
There's a devil inside me which cries, "You're not the son of the Carpenter, you're the son of King David! You are not a man, you are the Son of man whom Daniel prophesied." And still more: "The Son of God! And still more: God!"
The Last Temptation of Christ (1955)
Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it we do suddenly realize — sometimes with astonishment — how happy we had been.
Zorba the Greek (1946)
The rosy mountain peaks laughed like high lustrous thoughts,
and Helen, speechless, raised her pale hands toward the sun
and joyed to feel its warm rays falling on her frozen palms.
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938)
We, who are dying, are doing better, than they, who will live. For Crete doesn't need householders, she needs madmen like us. These madmen make Crete immortal.
Freedom and Death (1956)
O Sun, great Oriental, my proud mind's golden cap,
I love to wear you cocked askew and to burst in song
to rouse our hearts, so long as you and I both live.
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938)
You gave me your curse, holy Fathers. I give you a blessing: May you be as moral and religious as I am.
Three kinds of souls, three prayers:
1) I am a bow in your hands, Lord. Draw me, lest I rot.
2) Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break.
3) Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break.
Report to Greco (1965)
And now, my gallant lads — I don't know when or how —
that worm's god-slaying sword has fallen into my hands;
I swear that from its topmost iron tip the blood still drips!
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938)
While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it we do suddenly realize — sometimes with astonishment — how happy we had been.
Zorba the Greek (1946)
All my life I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point, until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console mankind.
Thus night with all her snares passed through the upper world
and baited all heads sweetly, fed all foolish hopes,
for night can bring to men all shrewish day denies,
wrapped as a gift in the green leaves of opiate dream.
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938)
I keep my heart flaming, courageous, restless. I feel in my heart all commotions and all contradictions, the joys and sorrows of life. But I struggle to subdue them to a rhythm superior to that of the mind, harsher than that of my heart — to the ascending rhythm of the Universe.
The Saviors of God (1923)
Monarch of earth, I shall confess my secret craft:
I've always fought to purify wild flame to light,
and kindle whatever light I found to burst in flame.
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938)
Behind each woman rises the austere, sacred and mysterious face of Aphrodite. ... Dame Hortense was only an ephemeral and transparent mask which Zorba tore away to kiss the eternal mouth.
Zorba the Greek (1946)
"Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality," says one of my favorite Byzantine mystics. I did this when a child; I do it now as well in the most creative moments of my life.
Report to Greco (1965)
Comrades, I've voyaged long and far on sea and soul,
my eyes have seen disease, gods, ghosts, and men, and yet
in no land have I seen a more false, murderous siren
than that wind-headed, babbling, blind bitch-hound called Hope!
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938)