Expressions from ZORBA THE GREEK

Some of my favorite expressions from ZORBA THE GREEK – by Nikos Kazantzakis


Page 99 and 100

Confucius says: “Many seek happiness higher than man; others beneath him. But happiness is the same height as man.” That is true. So there must be happiness to suit every man’s stature. Such is, my dear pupil and master, my happiness of the day. I anxiously measure it and measure it again, to see what my stature of the moment is. For, you know this very well, man’s stature is not always the same.

How the soul of man is transformed according to the climate, the silence, the solitude, or the company in which it lives!

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The world, an incomprehensible, absurd jungle. The notions of ‘nation’ and ‘race’ of which you are fond, the notions of ‘super-nation’ and ‘humanity’ which seduced me, here acquire the same value under the all-powerful breath of destruction.

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You must consider the life you lead a happy one. And since you consider it such, such it is.

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As of me, I often forget, I disparage myself, I lose my way, my faith is a mosaic of unbelief. Sometimes I feel I should like to make bargain: to live one brief minute and give the rest of my life in exchange.

-x-

if only we knew, boss, what the stones and rain and flowers say, maybe they call – call us – and we don’t hear them. When will people’s ears open, boss? When shall our eyes open to see? When shall we open our arms to embrace everything – stones, rain, flowers, men? What d’you think about that, boss? And what do your books have to say about it?

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Make a heap of all your books and set light to them! After that, who knows, you’re no fool, you’re the right sort… we might make something of you!

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Page 112 and 113


Life is trouble. Death no. to live – do you know what that means? To undo your belt and look for trouble!

-x-

My life had got on wrong track, and my contact with men had become now mere soliloquy. I had fallen so low that, if I had had to choose between falling in love with a woman and reading a book about love, I should have chosen the book.

-x-

You must know woman also succumb to a voice. And what won’t they succumb to – the jades! God only knows what goes on inside them! You may be as ugly as sin, lame or a hunchback, but if you’ve a soft voice and can sing, the woman completely lose their heads.

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He who can sleep with a woman and does not, commits a great sin. If a woman calls you to share her bed and you don’t go, your soul will be destroyed!

That woman will sigh before God on judgment day, and that woman’s sigh, whoever you may be and whatever your fine deeds, will cast you into Hell! If Hell exists, I shall go to Hell, and that’ll be the reason. Not because I’ve robed, killed or committed adultery, no! All that’s nothing. But I shall go to Hell because one night in Salonica a woman waited for me on her bed and I did not go to her…

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