I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge or Virtue or Goodness or Victory but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!
Interpretation
The quote highlights that the greatest achievement in life transcends knowledge and moral virtues, reaching into the realm of profound reverence and appreciation for existence.
Nikos Kazantzakis suggests that while knowledge, virtue, goodness, and victory are significant human accomplishments, there exists a deeper and more profound state of being referred to as 'Sacred Awe.' This sense of awe encompasses a profound recognition of the mystery of life and our place within it, evoking both a heroic spirit and a deep sense of despair, as it confronts the limits of human understanding and existence.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about personal growth and spiritual awareness.
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.
I'm sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things.
I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory.
Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.
For, he that expects nothing shall not be disappointed, but he that expects much - if he lives and uses that in hand day by day - shall be full to running over.
They were small, brightly coloured, happy little creatures who secreted some of the nastiest toxins in the world, which is why the job of looking after the large vivarium where they happily passed their days was given to first-year students, on the basis that if they got things wrong there wouldn't be too much education wasted.
Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.
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