Truth is error burned up.
I don’t know how they’ll fight World War III, but I know that World War IV will be with sticks and stones.
But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.
The world is half his that speaks it and half his that hears it.
You have to go beyond words and conceptualized ideas and just get into what you are, deeper and deeper. The first glimpse is not quite enough; you have to examine the details without judging, without using words and concepts. Opening to oneself fully is opening to the world.
As long as we have some definite idea about or some hope in the future, we cannot really be serious with the moment that exists right now.
“Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are. Some turn their food into fat and manure, some into work and good humor, and others, I’m told, into God. So there must be three sorts of men. I’m not one of the worst, boss, nor yet one of the best. I’m somewhere between the two. What I eat I turn into work and good humor. That’s not too bad, after all!”
He looked at me wickedly and started laughing.
“As for you, boss,” he said, “I think you do your level best to turn what you eat into God. But you can’t quite manage it, and that torments you. The same thing’s happening to you as happened to the crow.”
“What happened to the crow, Zorba?”
“Well, you see, he used to walk respectably, properly — well, like a crow. But one day he got it into his head to try and strut about like a pigeon. And from that time on the poor fellow couldn’t for the life of him recall his own way of walking. He was all mixed up, don’t you see? He just hobbled about.”
Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult — once we truly understand and accept it — then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.
I am alone with the beating of my heart.
I am sure that the manifold talents, creativity, inventiveness of young children — who can sing and dance and draw and tell tales and make verses and whose lives are so very clear and direct — could go on into adult life and not disappear, as tends to happen in our education.
Evil may be not seeing enough. So perhaps to become less evil we need only to see more.
As the generation of leaves, so is that of men.
Pleasure has desire in it. Desire is pain. There is no satisfaction. So pleasure is pain.
Attachment is a state of ignorance based on a memory of pleasure.
The day I surrendered myself for God, I transcended all anxiety, because trying to look after oneself is the only anxiety.
This fragment of your mind is such a tiny part of it that, could you but appreciate the whole, you would see instantly that it is like the smallest sunbeam to the sun, or like the faintest ripple on the surface of the ocean. In its amazing arrogance, this tiny sunbeam has decided it is the sun; this almost imperceptible ripple hails itself as the ocean. Think how alone and frightened is this little thought, this infinitesimal illusion, holding itself apart against the universe. . . . Do not accept this little, fenced-off aspect as yourself. The sun and ocean are as nothing beside what you are.
