The Greek earth opens before me like the Book of Revelation. I never knew that the earth contains so much; I had walked blindfolded, with faltering, hesitant steps; i was proud and arrogant, content to live the false, restricted life of the city m an The light of Greece opened my eyes, penetrated my pores, expanded my whole being. I came home to the world, having found the true centre and the real meaning of revolution. ... I refuse to be anything less than the citizen of the world which I silently declared myself to be when I stood in Agamemnon's tomb. From that day forth my life was dedicated to the recovery of the divinity of man. Peace to all men, I say, and life more abundant!

But the most trivial incident, if it happened to Katsimbalis, had a way of blossoming into a great event.

But there is something colossal about any human figure when that individual becomes truly and thoroughly human. ... Walking with him through the streets of Amaroussion I had the feeling that I was walking the earth in a totally new way. The earth became more intimate, more alive, more promising. ... He spoke of little things and of great with equal reverence; he was never too busy to pause and dwell on the things which moved him; he had endless time on his hands; which in itself is the mark of a great soul.

Because nobody can enjoy the experience he desires until he is ready for it. ... To desire is not merely to wish. To desire is to become that which one essentially is.

They made mythology of a reality which was too great for their human comprehension.

Until he has become fully human, until he learns to conduct himself as a member of the earth, he will continue to create gods who will destroy him.

We have learned through bitter mistakes that all the peoples of the earth are vitally connected, but we have not made use of that knowledge in an intelligent way. ... The world must become small again as the old Greek world was - small enough to include everybody. Until the very last man is included there will be no real human society.

The greatest single impression which Greece made upon me is that it is a man-sized world. ... Greece is the home of the gods; they may have died but their presence still makes itself felt. The gods were of human proportion: they were created out of the human spirit. ... If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.

To live creatively, I have discovered, means to live more and more unselfishly, to live more and more into the world, identifying oneself with it and thus influencing it at the core, so to speak. Art, like religion, it now seems to me, is only a preparation, an initiation into the way of life. The goal is liberation, freedom, which means assuming greater responsibility.

It's a mad world and when you become slightly detached it seems even more mad than usual.

Things long forgotten came back with frightening clarity. I was not sure whether I was recalling things I had read as a child or whether I was tapping the universal memory of the race. The fact that these places still existed, still bore their ancient names, seemed incredible.

The task of genius and man is nothing if not genius, is to keep the miracle alive, to live always in the miracle, to make the miracle more and more miraculous, to swear allegiance to nothing, but live only miraculously, think only miraculously, die miraculously.

Every discovery is mysterious in that it reveals what is so unexpectedly immediate, so close, so long and intimately known.

At Epidaurus, in the stillness, in the great peace which came over me, I heard the heart of the world beat. I know what the cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world.

Nature alone can do nothing. nature can cure only when man recognizes his place in the world, which is not in Nature, as with the animal, but in the human kingdom, the link between the natural and the divine.

The peace of the heart is positive and invincible, demanding no conditions, requiring no protection. It just is. If it is a victory it is a peculiar one because it is based entirely on surrender, a volontary surrender, to be sure.

The language hasn't any guts today. you're all castrated, you've become businessmen, engineers, technicians. It sounds like wooden money dropping into a sewer. We've got a language... we're still making it. It's a language for poets, not for shopkeepers.

... There was no longer any goal beyond - I became one with the Path. Each station thenceforth marked a progression into a new spiritual latitude and longitude.

At Eleusis one realizes, if never before, that there is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy. at Eleusis one becomes adapted to the cosmos. Outwardly Eleusis may seem broken, disintegrated with the crumbled past; actually Eleusis is still intact and it is we who are broken, dispersed, crumbling to dust. Eleusis lives, lives eternally in the midst of a dying world.

Light acquires a transcendental quality: it is not the light of the Mediterranean alone, it is something more, something unfathomable, something holy. here the light penetrates directly to the soul, opens the doors and windows of the heart, makes one naked, exposed, isolated in a metaphysical bliss which makes everything clear without being known.