"It is not you talking, but innumerable ancestors talking with your mouth. It is not you who desire, but innumerable generations of descendants longing with your heart. Your dead do not lie in the ground. They have become birds, trees, air. You sit under their shade, you are nourished by their flesh, you inhale their breathing. They have become ideas and passions, they determine your will and your actions. Future generations do not move far from you in an uncertain time. They live, desire, and act in your loins and your heart. In this lightning moment when you walk the earth, your first duty, by enlarging your ego, is to live through the endless march, both visible and invisible, of your own being."
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Philosophers from GreecePlaywrights from GreecePoets from GreeceNovelists from GreeceEssayists from Greece
Original Language: English
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Nikos Kazantzakis
1883 – 1957
griechischer [[Schriftsteller]]
177 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Nikos Kazantzakis →
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